McLaren’s Oscar Piastri has rued a “frustrating” 2023 Miami GP weekend which saw him struggle for pace.
Having finished 12th quickest in FP1 on Friday (5 May), Piastri struggled to replicate his pace across the remainder of the weekend – during which he suffered Q1 elimination in 19th position whilst teammate – Lando Norris was eliminated in 16th position in a double Q1 exit for McLaren.
Piastri though was able to recover to 14th at the start of the race but ultimately finished 19th after suffered a brake-by-wire failure, which he managed to the checkered flag albeit one lap down on race winner – Max Verstappen, amidst “a lot of issues” which impacted upon his race performance.
Explaining how difficult the race was from his perspective, Piastri commented: “We had a failure six or seven laps in on the brake-by-wire system. I was managing a lot of issues after that.
“I had a really good lap one, where I managed to pass five cars and that was the highlight of the weekend.
“Otherwise, a frustrating afternoon, trying to drive around all of the issues.”
McLaren Team Principal, Andrea Stella in-turn praised the Australian rookie for doing “an incredible job to cope with that through”, whilst “minimising the consequences and keeping decent pace. ”
Piastri has however vowed to fight back in Imola across weekend of 19-21 May, as he said: “We’ll now get our heads down and focus on having a better weekend in Imola.”
Norris meanwhile bemused a difficult race where he lacked pace despite gambling on a soft tyre start like Piastri, yet he “just struggled for pace.”
The Brit however got hit by AlphaTauri’s Nyck De Vries into Turn One at the start which cost him between 2-3 tenths per lap, although Norris eventually admitted that his strategy wouldn’t of delivered a top-ten finish unless “something exciting” unfolded in the race.
Leave a Reply