Oscar Piastri was left baffled that Charles Leclerc escaped a penalty after the pair made contact at the Belgian Grand Prix — an incident that impacted the rest of the Australian’s race.
On his way to a fifth-place finish for McLaren, Piastri was attacking the Ferrari driver for a podium position during the opening stint when he was squeezed to the edge of the track at Les Combes.
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The pair collided and Piastri suffered damage to the floor of his car, which he had to resume racing with.
“He didn’t leave enough space. That could have been a massive crash,” Piastri said over team radio.
Leclerc was investigated, but escaped punishment, and later looked sheepish in the cooldown room when the incident was replayed.
Max Verstappen then joked: “It was calculated.”
After the race, Piastri hadn’t changed his viewpoint over the incident.
“I don’t know where I was supposed to go. So I was equally surprised that nothing came,” Piastri said.
“But obviously it’s small contact which had big consequences for me. Could have had very big consequences for both of us. But it is what it is.
“I think from then on the race was definitely more difficult.
“The balance suffered quite a lot for the first stint after that, and then we were able to compensate a bit in the second stint and the pace seemed better again.
“But yeah, it was just a bit of a tricky race from then on.”
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Team principal Andrea Stella spoke further to how heavily Piastri was impacted.
“Because of losing the board, we lost between five and 10 points of downforce, dependent on the condition,” Stella told Sky Sports.
“And obviously when you have to find pace pushing the tyres, then the tyres may degrade more. That’s when we see the pace of stint one and stint two for Oscar.
“We see that to say that he’s using the tyres a lot, and then the tyres kind of give you the bill at the end of the stint.”
Meanwhile, Piastri said there were some positive signs to come from the race for McLaren, but said that the team remains too “inconsistent”.
“This weekend we did look better. Even yesterday for myself. Q3 there was a power unit anomaly, and the rest of my lap was good,” he added.
“Like there’s just a lot of things that skew the picture a bit at the moment. I think hopefully we can get on top of those bits first.”
Piastri sits sixth in the season standings on 92 points, 11 points behind world champion teammate Lando Norris, who finished Sunday in seventh.