Oscar Piastri criticized Lance Stroll after losing time behind Stroll’s Aston Martin in the Italian Grand Prix.
Piastri was trying to catch up to Charles Leclerc’s leading Ferrari after making a second pit stop, while Leclerc was extending his tyre life with a one-stop strategy.
Piastri lost about two seconds when he was passing Carlos Sainz. When he got behind Stroll on lap 49, he fell even further behind Leclerc, finishing 2.6 seconds behind the leader.
“I asked straight away what pace I needed to catch Charles,” Piastri said about his final stint. “The pace I needed was what I did for the first few laps, so I was hopeful.”
He added, “I lost a decent amount of time behind Carlos. Stroll was driving like it was his first kart race, and I don’t know what he was thinking when he saw the blue flag. That cost another second.”
Piastri needed everything to go perfectly to win, and those small issues cost him a chance. He said, “It was a long shot anyway, but it was close to being possible. I was pushing as hard as I could, but I came up a bit short.”
Onboard footage shows that Stroll did let Piastri through when the blue flag was shown, but Stroll stayed on the outside at Variante Ascari, forcing Piastri to brake on the inside. This resulted in Piastri’s slowest lap after clearing Sainz, with a half-second loss in the last sector.
Piastri has few regrets, even about strategy. He said slowing down wouldn’t have made a one-stop strategy work. “If the information I got was right, it wasn’t about driving slower,” he explained. “It was about handling the graining and getting through it.”
Piastri added, “In practice, when this happened, you could barely brake because the front left tyre was so worn. It seemed too risky, so it was the right choice in hindsight, but everyone is smarter after the race.”
