At Monza, Oscar Piastri finished second, losing by 2.664 seconds to Charles Leclerc, winner of the Italian Grand Prix. After his second pit stop on lap 38, the McLaren driver returned to the track 18.5 seconds behind the Monegasque Ferrari and quickly closed the gap, but had no time to overtake.
According to Piastri, this was also hampered by traffic in the final laps, as he had to pass the Aston Martin of Lance Stroll and the Alpine of Esteban Ocon, who were a lap down. However, he lost some time behind the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz before being able to get ahead of the Spaniard at the Ascari chicane on lap 45.
But when you add all this to a loss of around 0.8 seconds in the McLaren pits during the second pit stop, it shows that under ideal conditions he had a chance to overtake Leclerc.
“I asked the team straight away what pace we should overtake Charles at,” Oscar said after the race. “I kept about the same pace for the first few laps, so I was in a pretty optimistic mood.
But I lost quite a bit of time behind Carlos. And Stroll generally drove like this was the first kart race in his life – I don’t know what he was thinking when he saw the blue flags being shown. It cost me another second.
To win the race I had to ride the last part perfectly, but because of all these little things we missed our chance in the end. In any case, the chance of winning was not that big, but it is clear that there was still a chance to fight for it. I attacked with full force and tried to win the race, but I could not go any faster. But I just came up a little bit short.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
