The truth behind Oscar Piastri’s first-lap pass on Lando Norris

Oscar Piastri left F1 fans with mouths gaping as he pulled off an audacious around-the-outside pass on Lando Norris on the first lap of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Piastri, the outsider in the three-way championship showdown, brilliantly swooped around the outside of his McLaren teammate and title rival to secure second place on the opening lap of the season finale at Yas Marina.

The Australian would go on to finish second behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen as he missed out on a first world title, which was instead won by Norris, who took third.

Piastri earned many plaudits for his spectacular first-lap move, particularly given he started on hard tyres while Norris had mediums fitted to his McLaren.

But McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has since revealed that the overtake formed part of pre-race discussions about how to defeat Verstappen.

"Obviously, we wanted to have absolutely clean racing on the first lap," Stella explained.

"But we also discussed – with Oscar on a hard tyre – not making life difficult for Oscar to take the second place and then try and attack Verstappen – it was a strategic option that Lando was supporting.

"It was a good and fair overtake by Oscar, but in itself this is a scenario that we discussed, so it wasn't the hardest of the battles, because there was a general interest.

"Everyone was clear that the hard would have been a good tyre. And if there's somebody on a hard chasing somebody on a medium, the one on the medium needs to push and at some stage might have to pit.”

McLaren’s decision to split tyre strategies across Piastri and Norris limited Red Bull’s options for Verstappen, and also prevented the Dutchman from being able to try and bunch the field up in a last-ditch attempt to win the title.

Piastri ran long until Lap 41 before making his pit stop and hunted Verstappen down in the final stint, but came up 12 seconds short at the chequered flag.

"There wasn't anything left out there,” Piastri said. “Obviously, we tried a bit of a gamble on the strategy to give ourselves some different options and hope that the stars aligned to give ourselves the best chance.

"Ultimately, in the end, that didn't happen. I think given as well I missed a practice session, it took a little bit to find my feet, so I think that was the maximum we could have achieved. We didn't have an answer for Max's pace. So pretty happy with the weekend. Not much more we could have done."