Oscar Piastri has declared it “very important” that he and Lando Norris “protect” their McLaren colleagues, in the wake of his team-mate’s costly slow pit stop at the Italian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
The poor pit stop saw the British driver fall behind Piastri late in the race at Monza, with the Woking-based squad subsequently intervening to instruct the 24-year-old to return the position.<\/p>\n
Although initially reluctant, the Australian driver ultimately fell in line with the team orders and relinquished the place, a move that cost him a six-point swing in the F1 drivers’ standings against Norris.<\/p>\n
However, following the grand prix, he shared his opinion that it was the correct call, underlining the need to put himself “second” in that scenario.<\/p>\n
“We’ve said many times that we don’t want the chance of success just for this year,” Piastri told media, including RacingNews365.<\/p>\n
“There’s a big regulation change next year \u2013 we don’t know how competitive we’re going to be, and we don’t know how competitive anyone’s going to be.<\/p>\n
“Ultimately, we want the best chance at winning championships for as long as we’re Formula 1 drivers, and we’re both at McLaren for a very long time.<\/p>\n
“Protecting the people around us that give us this opportunity is a very important thing. It’s easy enough to put yourself second at times like that.”<\/p>\n
The nine-time grand prix winner highlighted that Norris had enjoyed the upper hand all afternoon, something that meant he had “no concern” in righting the wrong of his team-mate’s misfortune.<\/p>\n
Addressing the error by a pit crew member – who had failed to adequately secure Norris’ front left tyre at the first time of asking – head-on, Piastri pointed out how it must have felt for them.<\/p>\n
“If we were fighting very closely for the whole race, then it’s slightly different, but Lando was ahead by a few seconds the whole race, so there’s no concern for me with that,” he explained.<\/p>\n
“Again, we don’t just want this year to fight for a championship; we want it for as long as possible.<\/p>\n
“Protecting the people, that includes the people doing the pit stops… It’s not a very nice feeling, I would imagine. It’s important to protect all the people that we have because that’s what gives us a championship hope for years to come.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri has declared it “very important” that he and Lando Norris “protect” their McLaren colleagues, in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,2476,578,2479,2477,2480,2478,930,576,577,932,1885,2475,582,82],"class_list":["post-138030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}