McLaren’s Oscar Piastri hit with “own it from the cockpit” brutal honesty

David Coulthard asked Oscar Piastri whether he should have overruled McLaren’s pit stop strategy at the F1 British Grand Prix.

Teammate Lando Norris was leading at Silverstone until an ill-timed pit stop, amid changing weather conditions, which allowed eventual winner Lewis Hamilton to undercut him.

Norris finished third, a place ahead of Piastri, who also suffered from a strategy which confused Red Bull boss Christian Horner.

Piastri told Channel 4: “I feel like we’ve had too many weekends recently coming out of it feeling like we could have won, on both sides of the garage.

“We did a lot of things right. But the one call that we needed to get right? We didn’t.

“It’s the hardest decision for an F1 team to make. Both cars 1-2, separated by half a second, rain coming. You need to decide if both pit, one stays out, or both pit.

“It doesn’t get any more high pressure than that.

“We left it too late. Double stacking would have been the better call.”

Piastri added: “From my side, it was still just about okay to be on slicks. But the extra lap that I stayed, it got worse.”

The Australian driver was told that, if McLaren chose to double stack, they would have come home 1-2 at Silverstone.

“I know, it hurts,” he replied.

“At that point, I knew I’d lose a lot of time.

“Clearly the time I lost by staying out was a lot more.”

Piastri added: “Another lap, and I could’ve been leading the race. “Which could have changed the decision again, for when I pitted.

“The result is painful to swallow.”

Ex-F1 driver Coulthard then said to Piastri: “This throws me back to many years ago when I was at McLaren at the British Grand Prix.

“I got out of sequence in pit stops. I ended up doing four or five.

“I had doubt. I listened to the team because I thought they had a bigger picture.

“The lesson I took from it was: you’ve got to own it from the cockpit in those changing conditions.”

Piastri answered Coulthard: “I got told that Max Verstappen was faster. Ultimately the team know how much faster, and I don’t.

“It took every bit of concentration that I had to get into the lead. I knew that, if I got into the lead, I could have pitted on that lap first.

“The team are also considering that. They have to work out which car comes in first.

“The track got so much worse in that 30 seconds. From the cockpit, it’s hard.

“In that position, you always think your balls are a little bigger than they really are, and you can stay out on track!

“For me, and the rest of the team, some learnings to not repeat that one in the future.”