Piastri sees room for improvement after Norris helps him to win · RaceFans

Two weeks ago at Silverstone, a late call to switch to intermediate tyres potentially cost Oscar Piastri his first grand prix win.

While his team mate Lando Norris’ latest near-miss again commanded the majority of attention, Piastri was reflecting on another opportunity to win which had passed him by, as had arguably been the case at Imola and the Red Bull Ring.

“I think the kind of good thing, but kind of bad thing as well, is it’s never been the same thing that’s prevented us from winning,” he said in response to a question from RaceFans. “Obviously today we made a wrong call. Imola we had an issue in qualifying with traffic. In Austria – the less said about qualifying in Austria the better.

“So I guess it’s a good thing that it’s not been repeated error or mistake. But we have good handle now I think on both sides of the garage where we felt like we could have won the race. I think we’ve got the hardest part done, we’ve got an incredibly quick car, we just needs to capitalise on using it.”

At the Hungaroring, McLaren unquestionably did just that, delivering their first one-two since Italy 2021. Piastri was there to capitalise, taking the lead from his team mate at the start.

But the circumstances of Piastri’s breakthrough triumph undoubtedly took some of the shine off his moment of glory. McLaren’s tactics moved Norris into the lead as the final stint began and he took until the 68th lap of 70 to hand Piastri the lead back.

If Piastri seemed a little restrained in his celebrations afterwards, that probably said more about his character than any misgivings about how he won his first race. His personality could hardly contrast more clearly with F1’s other Australian racer, the wise-cracking, perma-grinning Daniel Ricciardo.

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“I don’t think it’s fully sunk in yet,” said Piastri in the press conference after the race. “And I’m not really the kind of person to get overly emotional. I don’t think you’re ever really going to see that from me.

“But it’s an incredible feeling. It’s something I’ve dreamed of since I was a kid. We’ve had a couple of opportunities through the last few races that we’ve come very close to. Now to make it happen is an incredible feeling.”

Piastri deserves to revel in Sunday’s success, notwithstanding the strange final phase of the race, where McLaren appeared to spend 20 laps begging Norris to give up the lead. Norris led McLaren’s front row lock-out but the gap between them was just two hundredths of a second. Piastri captured the lead at turn one while Norris’s sluggish getaway was compounded when Max Verstappen passed him off the track.

It wasn’t an entirely smooth drive to victory from that point on. On lap 33 he lost nearly two seconds to Norris – almost half his lead at that point – when he ran wide at the quick turn 10. Without that, Norris might never have got close enough to get ahead of Piastri at the final round of pit stops. Piastri also dipped a wheel into the new turn 11 gravel trap shortly after his final pit stop, though the time lost there was eventually cancelled out when Norris chose to hand him the lead.

But Piastri has been a much closer match for Norris on pace throughout much of this year, and Sunday’s race was another example of that. In the same event 12 months ago Piastri got ahead of his team mate at the start, and when Norris gained position by making his first pit stop earlier, McLaren chose not to reverse the positions as their more experienced driver was clearly the quicker of the two. This year they decided against doing the same, even as Norris drew as far as six seconds ahead of his team mate in the final stint.

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Norris has a reputation for being unsparing in his criticism of his own performances and Piastri’s assessment of his drive on Sunday was much the same. Despite winning, Piastri was well aware there were points in the race where he could have performed better.

“The whole race we were very evenly-matched,” said Piastri afterwards. “Ultimately, I just wasn’t quite as quick as I needed to be in the last stint. So that’s something that I want to improve.

“I’m very, very happy with the result, of course. But in terms of leaving the weekend with the question of am I fully satisfied with my performance today? No, I’m not. There’s still things I want to improve.

“I think track position made a very big difference today and I think that’s why having the start I did was so critical. I think just ultimately, I didn’t quite have the pace that I wanted in the last thing. And I still need to go and assess why that was the case.”

Nonetheless, Piastri has become a grand prix winner at his 35th attempt – considerably earlier in his career than Norris, whose maiden triumph earlier this year in Miami came in his 110th start. And if the circumstances weren’t ideal, the historic parallels are far more encouraging. The last time a McLaren driver was gifted his maiden victory by his team mate he won the next two world championships…

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