Oscar Piastri was expected to win Sunday’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone but a key decision by the McLaren team saw him drop out of the race.
Piastri had a quiet start, starting fifth, but passed Stow on lap 17 to pass Max Verstappen. Then the rain started to fall and the McLaren suddenly looked the best on the track.
Lando Norris took the race lead on lap 20, while Piastri overtook both Mercedes cars of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton to move into second place.
At this point, none of the leading cars had pitted to change intermediate tyres, but as rain fell for a second time on lap 25 and continued for a long time, Verstappen and Carlos Sainz responded immediately.
Norris came in next, while Russell and Hamilton lost time due to double-stacking. McLaren avoided the problem by letting Piastri go for another lap, but things got worse sooner than expected.
When Piastri tiptoed across the increasingly wet circuit to pit for Inter, he was 18 seconds behind Hamilton – effectively an extra pit stop. Not doing a double-stake was clearly a mistake.
“To be honest, I think the decision I made in that race was probably the hardest one you can make in motor racing,” Piastri told media in the paddock when asked about the decision on the McLaren pit wall after the race.
“There are two cars half a second apart in the rain. I don’t think it can get any more difficult than that,” he said, insisting it was a joint call between himself and the team.
He said he knew it was a bad decision “as soon as I got out of the pit lane” and added: “The last two corners were really, really tough.
“When I came into the pit stop and saw Landau on the dashboard five seconds behind me, I knew I was in big trouble.
“The conditions got tougher and tougher, but it was really, really hard to judge. It was only half the track that was really tough until the lap I was on, and then the whole track got tough.
“[I was] Of course I was frustrated at that point, but I knew the rain was going to keep coming. After the first few laps, it was clear to me that the cars ahead had been using a lot of intermissions in the first few laps, and I was actually optimistic.
“But then I hit the same wall as everyone else,” he admitted. “I knew I would have more opportunities later in the race with the slicks and the tyre choice.
“I knew there would be more opportunities, so I just tried to give myself a chance to win,” he said. He overtook Sainz to take the position and then got another when Russell retired, but that was it.
However, his decision to switch to medium-sized tyres in the final race gave him the fastest lap time, but the steep drop meant he could not catch the cars ahead.
“I think it was the right decision to go with Medium. We were fastest at the end,” he said. “Every other decision in that race worked out perfectly.
“It’s just a shame we weren’t in a better position midway through the game,” he admitted. “There are definitely some things we need to look at. I think double stacking would have been a better decision, but in hindsight it’s a really cool thing to do.
“We have to make sure we have the information that tells us it would be a better option, but it’s obviously a bit painful given the gap to Lewis,” he said of his drop from second to sixth after the pitstop.
As a result of today’s race, Piastri is now fifth in the Drivers’ Championship with 124 points. The combined efforts of the McLaren drivers have helped McLaren to move into second place in the Constructors’ Championship, seven points ahead of Ferrari.
