MELBOURNE — McLaren said its call for Oscar Piastri to hold position behind Lando Norris during the Australian Grand Prix was only ever meant to be temporary.
Despite insisting throughout preseason its two drivers would be able to race in its title-contending car, on Lap 30 Piastri was told to hold station in second. Three laps later McLaren let Piastri know he was now free to race, adding “you know the rules.”
McLaren said the call came at a tense moment in the race as the two cars approached backmarking traffic at one of the points the weather was set to dramatically change.
“We had to go relatively soon through some backmarkers while the cars were close together,” team principal Andrea Stella explained after the race. “The conditions on track were still a little tricky with intermediate tyres that were running down a bit in terms of their rubber on and at the same time we were receiving some updates on the weather forecast.
“So, we had the going through the backmarkers and the update on the weather forecast that led us to close for a short period of time the internal racing between our two drivers until we had clarity as to the weather prediction. What this meant for how we should have used the tyres and then up until we had closed the matter of overtaking the backmarkers.
“So once this was completed and the weather was assessed we re-opened the racing.”
Oscar Piastri reflects on his “mistake” during the Australian Grand Prix which saw the McLaren driver slide onto the grass in front of his home support.
Although it was unclear from the broadcasted radio messages, Stella said the drivers knew the call was for a temporary period in the race.
“The drivers were aware when we gave the team order to hold positions and then they were aware when we told them to be free to race.
“In the meantime I left them to communicate with the drivers, but for drivers we didn’t know even ourselves how long this period would have been until the weather forecast had become a little clearer.
“So, we just tried to keep this period as short as possible and the drivers know that this is the case so we don’t want to make it unnecessarily long.”
Norris went on to win the race, although Piastri ended up tumbling down the order with a late mistake as the rain worsened towards the end of the race.
Source: espn.com