{"id":649491,"date":"2026-05-04T18:04:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T18:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/649491\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T18:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T18:04:10","slug":"piastri-says-his-miami-grand-prix-battle-with-russell-felt-random-racefans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/649491\/","title":{"rendered":"Piastri says his Miami Grand Prix battle with Russell felt \u201crandom\u201d \u2013 RaceFans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Formula 1\u2019s latest rules changes did little to make the racing better or safer, said Oscar Piastri<\/a> after yesterday\u2019s Miami Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

Last weekend the championship held its first races since introducing a package of changes which were intended to address problems drivers identified following the first three rounds. These included the potentially high closing speeds between cars, which contributed to Oliver Bearman\u2019s<\/a> crash at Suzuka, as well as concerns over cars\u2019 performance in qualifying.<\/p>\n

Piastri started neither of the first two grands prix this year and experienced little wheel-to-wheel racing at Suzuka as he took the lead at the start. He was not impressed by the racing in Sunday\u2019s grand prix and said F1\u2019s changes have been a limited improvement at best.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reduced harvest limit in qualifying has helped a bit,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not fixed the problem or all the problems, but it\u2019s helping with one.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe races are basically exactly the same and I think today was my first proper experience of overtaking people and then having to defend and stuff like that. It\u2019s pretty crazy, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Piastri repeatedly swapped places with George Russell<\/a> as their cars\u2019 energy levels varied due to their harvesting and deployment patterns and the availability of Overtake Mode. He said the fight felt \u201crandom\u201d and pointed out the closing speeds between cars can still be very high.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt one point George was one second behind me and managed to overtake me by the end of that straight,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a bit random.<\/p>\n

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe closing speeds are huge and trying to anticipate that as the defending driver is incredibly tough to do. Obviously for the overtaking driver, I wasn\u2019t that pleased with one of the moves that George did, but I kind of found myself almost doing the same move about five laps later, just because the closing speed is enormous. So from that side of things, not much has really changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The McLaren driver doubts much more can be done through minor changes to the current rules to improve the racing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the collaboration from the FIA and F1 has been good, but there\u2019s only so many things you can change with the hardware we have. So some changes in the future are I think still needed for sure. How quickly we can do it is the big question.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miss nothing from RaceFans<\/p>\n

Get a daily email with all our latest stories – and nothing else. No marketing, no ads. Sign up here:<\/p>\n

2026 Miami Grand Prix
\nBrowse all 2026 Miami Grand Prix articles<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Formula 1\u2019s latest rules changes did little to make the racing better or safer, said Oscar Piastri after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-649491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}