Oscar Piastri has admitted that the order to yield to his teammate At Monza had an impact on his subsequent performances.

Having opted to extend both drivers opening stints, with Lando Norris running second and Piastri third, it was the Briton who had first call in terms of pitting. However, with Charles Leclerc having previously stopped and increasingly a threat to the Australian, Norris was asked if he would defer to his teammate. He agreed.

Piastri stopped on Lap 45 (of 53) while Norris stopped a lap later. Unfortunately, a problem with the left-front wheel-gun meant that Norris lost several seconds during the stop and emerged behind the Australian, both having now been passed by Max Verstappen who had pitted on Lap 37. It was then McLaren made the controversial decision to tell Piastri to hand the position back to his teammate.

At the time of the incident, the Australian made his frustration quite clear: "We said that a slow pit stop was part of racing," he argued with his engineer. "I don't really get what's changed here. But if you really want to do it then I'll do it."

He subsequently calmed down, though the incident continued to trouble his management and indeed fans, yet while the matter appeared settled, the Australian never seemed to fully regain his confidence and endured a string of disappointing performances, not least crashing out of qualifying in Baku and again in the race.

Speaking on the Beyond the Grid podcast, Piastri admits the affect that Monza had on him.

"Obviously, the race before that was Monza," he replies when asked about the Azerbaijan nightmare, "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 in Baku itself, Friday was tough, things weren't working, I was overdriving," he admits, "I wasn't very happy with how I was driving and ultimately probably trying to make up for that a little bit on Saturday.

"I think there was kind of some things in the lead-up, let's say, that were maybe not the most helpful and then things that happened on the weekend. We had an engine problem in FP1 that kind of unsettled things a bit, and then I was driving not that well. We were on C6 tyres that weekend, which are notoriously tricky to handle. There were just a lot of little things that eventually kind of added up.

"Ultimately, Baku was the perfect storm of quite a few things," he says. "Obviously, it was a pretty terrible weekend, but I think the amount of learning we had from that weekend, from a technical point of view, emotional point of view... there's no beating around the bush, that was the worst weekend I've ever had in racing, but probably the most useful in some ways. So, when you can start to look at things like that, normally that helps you out quite a lot.

"If you look at some of the names that have had some pretty shocking weekends, or almost unbelievable weekends or races or moments in their career where things have gone wrong; it happens to anyone.

"There's not one person in racing that doesn't have some kind of disastrous story of how a weekend went wrong for them. Looking at it from that perspective does help a lot, but you still need to learn the things you need to learn from weekends like that."

Let's hope that McLaren has learned also, though some insist that it hasn't.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Hobgoblin, 6 hours ago

"What seems to be conveniently overlooked is that Lando was demonstrably faster than Oscar in Monza, AND he yielded his right to first pitstop to help Oscar at the request of the team (and on the proviso that he didn't lose position).
If they didn't honour this proviso, and left him second to Oscar, then the accusations of bias would be coming from the Lando fans - and he would be the subject of this article."

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2. Posted by Chester, 6 hours ago

"I was wrong about Oscar. He has killer instincts on the track but does yield to team orders. A weakness for sure. McLaren corporate now have what they want, Lando on track to win the WDC.

Put yourself in their shoes. They want what Mercedes had, a Hamilton/Mercedes aura that benefited Mercedes road car prestige.

They're already getting it. At the recent Sao Paulo F1 watch party in Austin, there were four tables of McLaren-mechandise clad "watchers". I diod not find a single Piastri fan.

Just like in the years of Mercedes dominance, these sycophants (yes, its mean, but I think an apt descriptor) are numerous. But I am an outlier it seems, always rooting for underdogs, not teams that have a very good chance of winning. "

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3. Posted by ausieausieausie, 16 hours ago

"Hey Oscar, turn your radio OFF and drive your own way."

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4. Posted by kenji, 16 hours ago

"What Oscar has done here is to simply and truthfully put some perspective into what he is experiencing. The teams pro Lando actions started with race 1 in Melbourne and have since cropped up at some other events throughout the season. Sooner or later the boring and pious explanations by Stella become routine and maybe Piastri has finally seen through them. I would say that it's nigh on impossible to completely ignore the impact of this on a young driver who has and still is being slowly undermined. Just watch the reactions, especially of Zak Brown, on the prat perch when Oscar wins and alternatively when Oscar wins! The body language speaks volumes...to me at least. The ignominy of Oscar's penalty in Brazil should be noted. With the exception of a few the general concensus was that the FIA were wrong. McLaren could have challenged but they chose not to...what a weak response to not back their driver. "

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Piastri admits that Monza team orders affected him

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