McLaren’s Oscar Piastri suffered an uncharacteristically difficult weekend at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
After crashing during qualifying, the Australian driver started the race already on the back foot from ninth with a replacement chassis. But his weekend went from bad to worse when he jumped the start of the race, battled with the anti-stall system, and then crashed on the first lap at Turn 5.
Sky Sports F1 analyst and former Formula 1 driver Anthony Davidson analysed the crash during the broadcast at the Baku City Circuit.
“I can’t remember the last time that Oscar Piastri made so many mistakes during the course of a weekend, but like [Andrea] Stella was saying, hopefully it’s all accumulated in this one weekend,” he said.
“There’s that jump, stops, anti-stall. The anti-stall message is brief on his dash. He would have felt that immediately as you release the clutch and the car doesn’t go anywhere and the engine just free-revs, momentarily. The driver then has to re-press the clutch. You pull the clutch back in and give it another go.
“But the car jumps violently trying to get back in as you are not holding the proper revs anymore. And that’s why he ends up losing so many positions. He would have definitely got that five-second penalty on top of that. It didn’t put him off initially, he was quick to start making positions again.
“He took it easy through Turn 2 on these cold tyres at the start of the race. He was up to speed by the time we get to Turn 3 and getting past Albon in the Williams straight away into that corner.
Oscar Piastri, McLaren
Photo by: Rudy Carezzevoli / Getty Images
“Then he’s on the attack with Gasly as well, picks off another position there. Round the outside of Turn 4 he goes, you’ve got the Haas there of Ocon and he slots in behind him.”
Davidson argued that the championship leader could have been influenced by Sauber driver Nico Hulkenberg into thinking he could brake at a different point.
“This is where it all goes wrong in Turn 5. What I believe happens here is that he’s got Hulkenberg in front of him, trying to make a move around the outside of one of the Haas drivers. I think it in a way goads Piastri into thinking ‘that’s where I can brake.’ But Hulkenberg runs wide himself, very wide actually,” he continued.
“To give Oscar some credit here and some let-off, I think he’s just following in another driver that is also going quite deep. You judge the gap between yourself and the other car and I think that’s what’s caught him out here and why he’s ultimately ended up in the barriers.
“I think if the car in front of him, Hulkenberg, had been a bit easier on the brakes, naturally it would have made Oscar brake a bit earlier as well. But I’m giving him excuses.
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“The calibre that he is as a driver, leading the world championship, as difficult as this is, you shouldn’t really be expecting mistakes like that when you are at his level. So a really disappointing weekend.”
Despite crashing out of the race, Piastri continues to lead the drivers’ championship, but the gap to his main rival and McLaren team-mate Lando Norris is now 25 points. Max Verstappen, who heads into the Singapore Grand Prix on the back of back-to-back race wins, is now also posing a threat having closed the gap to Norris to 44 points and the gap to Piastri to 69 points.