Sick Piastri got through Baku weekend on ‘four pieces of toast’ 

The McLaren driver was struck down with a bout of food poisoning ahead of the fourth round of the season in Baku, but still managed to put in an impressive performance throughout the weekend. 

Piastri reached Q3 in Friday qualifying, finished 10th in Saturday’s sprint race and narrowly missed out on points again in Sunday’s grand prix as he took 11th. 

“I’m not too bad,” the Australian explained afterwards. “I think the adrenaline's still kicking at the moment. But I felt a bit better this morning, which was good.

“And I think through the race, it didn't impact me too much. I'm a lot lighter than I was at the start of the weekend.

“Today's probably been the best I've felt all weekend, which isn't saying much. But yeah, it's been very difficult physically. Especially yesterday, it was pretty rough.

“I think I've had about four pieces of toast for the whole weekend! So I may need to get some food back in me before Miami.

“It’s been been tough, happy to see the end of it, but I still learnt a lot today on tyre management and stuff like that. So we’ll have a look and see what we can do better next time.”

McLaren boss Andrea Stella admitted the team feared that Piastri would be forced to sit out some of the weekend’s action. 

“We had a couple of points during the weekend in which we needed to evaluate ‘Is it better to rest now to make sure that we are okay on Sunday?’,” Stella said. 

“So I can certainly admit that we made this evaluation a couple of times. We were very well supported by our team doctor.

“And I would like to acknowledge that the overall medical support was excellent in assisting Oscar, like his team.

“But Oscar was always very calm, and 'Okay, let's try, I'll get in the car. If I can't do it, I will box.

“And then he always found the resources to go through the session. But yes, at a couple of points we thought, 'let's think that we want to be okay on Sunday, not now.'.