McLaren’s Monza swap played on Piastri’s mind before Baku meltdown

Oscar Piastri has confessed that McLaren’s decision to swap their drivers at the Italian Grand Prix was on his mind heading into his disastrous weekend in Baku.

McLaren ordered Piastri to let teammate and title rival Lando Norris through after he suffered a slow pit stop that dropped him behind Piastri having agreed to allow the Australian to be serviced first in a bid to protect the team’s 2-3 finish at Monza.

Piastri initially questioned the decision but later agreed that McLaren’s call had been “fair” and in line with heir policy of remaining as even-handed as possible with their drivers battling for the world championship.

Piastri has gone on to suffer a dramatic form slump that has seen him fall 24 points behind Norris, with a crash-strewn weekend at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix proving a decisive moment in the title race.

Speaking to F1’s Beyond The Grid podcast before the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, where Piastri lost more ground to Norris, he admitted that McLaren’s team order at Monza did play on his mind in the lead up to Baku.

"Ultimately a combination of quite a few things,” Piastri replied when asked if he understood why his weekend in Azerbaijan went so badly wrong.

“Obviously the race before that was Monza, which I didn't feel was a particularly great weekend from my own performance, and there was obviously what happened with the pitstops.

"But then also Baku itself, Friday was tough. Things weren't working, I was overdriving. I wasn't very happy with how I was driving and ultimately probably trying to make up for that a little bit on Saturday.”

Piastri reflects on ‘worst weekend in racing’

Piastri continued: ”There were some things in the lead-up, let's say, that were maybe not the most helpful.

“Then things that happened on the weekend - we had an engine problem in FP1 that kind of unsettled things a bit, then I was driving not that well, we were on C6 tyres that weekend that are now notoriously tricky to handle. There were just a lot of little things that kind of added up.

"I felt like on Saturday my pace was good but I was just trying a little too hard. That was the worst weekend I've ever had in racing, but probably the most useful in some ways.

“Nothing is ever going to be perfect. A lot of things were going very well at certain points this season but a lot of things along the way haven’t been perfect either. That’s just how things go.

“It happens to anyone, it doesn’t matter how much you’ve achieved, and it happens to everyone. There’s not one person in racing that doesn’t have some kind of disastrous story of how a weekend went wrong for them.

“I think looking at it that way does help a lot, but you also still need to learn what you need to learn from weekends like that.”