Oscar Piastri, the Australian driver for McLaren, expressed his relief that the race in question was the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix. This was due to the significant loss of downforce he experienced as a result of damage sustained at the start of the race. Piastri had a slower start compared to Carlos Sainz, but managed to hold on to second place on the outside of the track. However, a minor collision between the two drivers caused Sainz to suffer a puncture and rendered him unable to navigate through Casino. Thankfully, a separate incident involving Sergio Perez and the Haas drivers led to a red flag, allowing Sainz to regain his position in third place during the restart. McLaren took advantage of the stoppage to replace the damaged right-hand sidepod of Piastri’s MCL38. Despite this repair, Piastri had to complete the remaining laps with damage to the floor of his car. The team informed him that the glancing blow had a significant impact on the car’s performance, and he was grateful that overtaking is nearly impossible on the tight streets of Monte Carlo. Piastri emphasized the sensitivity of this part of the car and how easily it can ruin a race. However, he was pleased that they were able to attempt to fix the damage and continue the race.
Piastri disclosed that he comprehended the magnitude of the damage to his car in the final laps as he fell behind by eight seconds from Charles Leclerc and faced pressure from Sainz.
“Yeah, I mean, it was satisfactory. I think for the initial half of the race, it was impossible to determine the consequences of that,” Piastri expressed regarding the damage.
“I think towards the end, probably a combination of maintaining a reasonably quick pace in the race, plus the condition of the car’s floor, yeah, I just struggled a bit towards the end.
“But overall, I’m quite content with it. And yeah, in the last 10 laps or so, I was pretty pleased that we were in Monaco.”
Nevertheless, Piastri managed to secure second place in his second Monaco race in F1 and achieved his first podium appearance this season, with his teammate Lando Norris finishing in fourth.
“I’m extremely happy,” he expressed. “Yeah, a third podium in F1 never gets old.
“So, no, I’m very happy to have it here in Monaco, especially if there’s one podium, apart from your home podium, that you aspire to stand on, it’s probably here.
“So, very, very pleased for the entire team. I think particularly for our side of the garage.
“We’ve had some promising weekends recently, and it’s nice to finally get a good result out of it. So, very, very happy.”
Piastri denied the possibility that he could have done more to snatch an emotional home victory from Leclerc’s grasp, stating that a brief attempt at Portier was the closest he could get.
“I made an attempt about 10 or 15 laps in, at Turn 8,” he recalled. “We were going quite slow. At one point, we were even slower than Formula 2.
“You know, when you’re moving at such a slow pace, you have a number of options.
“But I had a feeling that once I revealed my intention to overtake, he would probably anticipate it from that point on.
“So, I got very close at Turn 7 on one lap. I tried to make a move at Turn 8, but he reacted just quickly enough. After that, I knew my options would be extremely limited.”