Piastri falls short of Austrian GP win: “I tried my absolute best”

Oscar Piastri’s pursuit of a podium finish at the Austrian Grand Prix was dominated by an intra-team battle deemed “too marginal” by the McLaren pit wall, as an uneasy encounter with Alpine added further fire to his already “intense” race.

As the five lights went out, the sprint to the first corner was a decisive moment in Piastri’s Austrian Grand Prix when the McLaren driver crucially got the jump on Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, stealing second place as the field rounded Turn 1. 

“[Passing Leclerc] made a big difference,” Piastri said. 

“It meant I could stay in DRS from the start, and DRS is very powerful here so that certainly helped in the battle at the start. 

“That was an important moment of the race, and then it pretty quickly became clear that it was just going to be a fight between us two. 

“That was a key moment.”

Sticking to his teammate’s rear wing, Piastri attempted to attack Lando Norris into Turn 3, however, withheld from making a move — a decision Kimi Antonelli wished he was able to make when his actions resulted in an opening lap Safety Car after just three corners of racing.

When the reduced 70-lap race got back underway, Piastri held onto the DRS advantage as he tracked within a second of his teammate while beginning to formulate his attack plan. 

The #81 had a slight look into Turn 4 on Lap 6, however, the battle reached its peak from Lap 11 onwards when rising gearbox temperatures forced Piastri to make a move. 

Tussling with Norris into Turn 3, Piastri momentarily found himself as the race leader before his unrelenting teammate fought back, challenging the Australian on the long run to Turn 4 and successfully reclaiming P1 despite a second challenge through the sweeping Turn 6.

Four laps later, Piastri found himself back in with a chance of stealing the gold medal from Norris as the duo arrived into the first turn separated by just one-tenth, however, the Australian didn’t strike.

“There have been a few battles in the past, not just last week, but last year and the year before,” Piastri said. 

“So, I think we both knew what to expect — it was a tough battle. 

“It was close at some points, probably pushing the limits a bit much from my side once or twice, but we’re fighting for race wins in Formula 1. 

“It’s going to be pretty tough work and pretty hard. 

“I thought it was an entertaining race. 

“After the first stop, maybe we didn’t do the right thing giving Lando some breathing room, but the first 20 laps were pretty intense. 

“So, it was a good battle.”

His frustration got the better of him after spending the first 20 laps within touching distance of the #4, tempting him into an error at Turn 4 which saw Piastri come within centimetres of causing serious harm to both McLaren drivers’ races after he locked up on the inside of the popular overtaking zone. 

The Australian was informed on the McLaren pit wall’s view on the incident, with his race engineer Tom Stallard warning him that the incident was deemed “too marginal” and was not to be repeated — a sentiment Piastri agreed with as he apologised to the team over the radio on his way to the podium celebrations. 

“I mean, I thought it was a fair comment,” he said.

“Locking up and missing the back of your teammate by not a lot is certainly pushing the boundaries. 

“Even if I hadn’t been told anything, I didn’t think it was a wise decision to try that one again. 

“So, yeah, a fair comment and nothing more than that.”

Following Norris and Piastri’s entertaining battle, the lead McLaren enacted his priority pitstop at the end of Lap 20 — a decision that left Piastri strategising from the cockpit as he planned out his next move.

Deciding between a stop on the following lap or extending his first stint on the medium compound tyre, Piastri opted for the latter, prioritising tyre delta over a slimmer interval on return with Stallard informing his racer that the second option would bring him out four seconds behind Norris on track.

“I knew that I was always going to be pitting second in that scenario,” the Australian explained.

“For me, it felt like if I couldn’t stay within DRS, then getting back inside one second was going to be very, very tough. 

“So, I kind of wanted to go a bit different and give myself some fresher tyres and hopefully be able to use them at the end of the stint. 

“It didn’t really pan out that way, unfortunately, but that was the thinking at least. 

“We’ll go back and look and see whether that was the right thing to do. 

“In the moment, I was always going to lose some amount of time by pitting a lap later, so I kind of went, why not try something a bit different?”

When he pulled into the pitlane on Lap 24, a slow stop due to issues with the front left tyre — a problem Norris also faced during his earlier stop — Piastri meant Piastri was stationary for 3.4 seconds.

As a result, he rejoined the race in fourth place, now 5.5 seconds behind Norris as he brought his hard compound tyres up to temperature.

The Australian set the then-fastest lap as he attempted to close the margin, reducing it by half when Lap 40 arrived, however, a messy first sector which included Piastri skating across the sausage kerbs at Turn 1 made his hard work irrelevant.

Norris made his second stop on Lap 52, handing the lead to the Australian for just 4.3km as he opted to pit on the following lap, rejoining in second place with the Ferrari duo in P3 and P4 well out of sight in his mirrors. 

A battle that regrettably wasn’t out of sight for the Australian was the heated duel between Yuki Tsunoda and Franco Colapinto ahead, with the back-markers unwilling to adhere to the flashing blue flag warnings as they tussled for position during Piastri’s out-lap. 

The Red Bull and Alpine drivers traded places into Turn 3, with Piastri then expecting Colapinto to let him by on the long run into Turn 4 but instead being forced onto the grass as a result of the Argentine driver failing to look in his mirrors. 

Dirtying all four on his tyres off the track, Piastri was audibly furious with the team he infamously severed ties with in 2022, saying they “still managed to find a way to **** me over all these years later”. 

The moment added over a second to his fight with Norris, with Piastri having to brush his emotions to the side for the final ten laps of the Austrian Grand Prix where more traffic interferences plagued his race.  

After shrinking the margin to within two seconds, the duelling teammates soon arrived on the scene of an intense war between Fernando Alonso and Gabriel Bortoleto — veteran vs rookie, manager vs driver.

Putting on one of the most exciting displays of racing all day, the pair showed no signs of backing out of their fight for P7, costing Piastri crucial time in his ultimately unsuccessful hunt for victory.

The interval between the leaders dropped to a late low of 1.3 seconds on the final lap, however, the 24-year-old ran out of time, forced to have a front-row seat as Norris claimed his third victory of the season at the Austrian Grand Prix. 

Piastri took the chequered flag 2.6 seconds after Norris, claiming the silver medal and the fastest lap of the race with a flying time of 1:07.924s.

The Brit’s triumph in Spielberg added 25 points to his championship campaign, reducing Piastri’s current WDC-leading buffer to 15 points ahead of Norris and McLaren’s home race weekend at the British Grand Prix.

On his expectations of performing in front of the expectedly bias crowd, Piastri says he doesn’t believe it will be a hostile environment despite going toe-to-toe with the fan-favourite driver.

“A couple of years ago they were chanting my name in the crowd, so that was unexpected,” Piastri said. 

“I’m not sure I’ll quite get that again, which is fair enough. 

“I feel like the fans in general this year have been a bit nicer to us. 

“We didn’t even have Max Verstappen fans booing us today, so that was a nice change. 

“They’ve always been very accepting of me. 

“Obviously, I race for a British team, and I think they’re big fans of everything papaya and that includes both of us. 

“I’m expecting there to be a lot more Lando fans than me fans, but that’s fair. 

“It’s his home race as well, so I think it’ll be fine.”

Yet to finish on the podium in Silverstone, but coming ever-so-close with a fourth-place finish in 2023, the green light on Piastri’s first practice session at the British Grand Prix will take place at 21:30 on Friday, July 04.

Image: Formula 1

2025 British Grand Prix Schedule:

Friday, July 04:

FP1: 21:30 – 22:30

Saturday, July 05:

FP2: 01:00 – 02:00

FP3: 20:30 – 21:30

Sunday, July 06:

Qualifying: 00:00 – 01:00

Monday, July 07:

Race: 00:00

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