Oscar Piastri divulged that McLaren discovered nothing unusual with his car contributed to the tough weekend he endured at the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix.
Piastri’s championship bid experienced a setback last weekend in Austin as he returned his lowest classified finish since the opening race in Australia with fifth place.
Lando Norris did not share his team-mate’s struggles in the sister McLaren, ending up 21 seconds up the road in second to trim the gap between the two to 14 points.
That prompted McLaren boss Andrea Stella to reveal that the team would be instigating an in-depth review to see whether there were anomalies with Piastri’s MCL39.
However, Piastri, who has now gone three consecutive races without a podium, disclosed that the team’s post-race inspection detected no serious issues with his car.
And while some drivers have tended to resort to requesting measures such as a chassis change in response to a poor run, that is not a route that Piastri has adopted.
“No, I haven’t asked them to change anything,” Piastri told media including Motorsport Week.
“I think there were some things that were maybe not as good as they could have been, but nothing drastically wrong with the car.
“I think there were a few things in terms of how the weekend played out and how the race panned out that were different to our expectations from a few different angles.
“But, yeah, while the car maybe wasn’t ideal, if we could do the weekend again, we’d probably do a few things a little bit differently – but we wouldn’t be changing anything major.”
Piastri denies a trend behind recent Norris inroads
Despite last weekend marking the third successive race that Norris has outscored his team-mate, Piastri has denied that there is a trend behind his sudden downturn.
With Max Verstappen also entering contention with three victories in the last four rounds, the championship leader is bidding to bounce back this weekend in Mexico.
“I think it’s very COTA-specific. It was just a messy weekend with everything that went on,” he explained.
“So there’s an element of that hampering things. But I think the analysis we’ve done has highlighted that there were a lot of things specific to Austin.
“So I’m not really concerned that those problems will still persist. Obviously, I’m hoping that this weekend is a bit better.”
READ MORE – McLaren removes Lando Norris repercussions after Oscar Piastri F1 US GP Sprint Race collision
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