Piastri: It needed 'something pretty special' to beat Leclerc.
"To be honest, Charles has been mega all weekend and they've been quick from the very first lap, and I think it would have taken something pretty special in quali to out do him.” Oscar Piastri.
18:41 Sun, 26 May 2024.
Andrew Lewin
F1i.com

Leclerc got a strong launch leaving Piastri fighting off a challenge from Carlos Sainz in the second Ferrari. Contact between them left Sainz with a puncture and Piastri with light floor damage to the MCL38.

The race was red flagged after a major accident toward the back, giving Piastri a second shot at challenging Leclerc into turn 1, but once again the Ferrari was too strong and Piastri has to accept second place.

"The pace at the beginning was incredibly slow and I had one little half look before the tunnel, but I didn't have a small enough car to fit into a gap," Piastri said in parc ferme.

‘Piastri has to accept second place’;

https://f1i.com/news/509275-piastri-...t-leclerc.html


Piastri ‘tried my best to try and sneak past’ Leclerc in battle for Monaco win
19:05 Sun, 26 May 2024.
Formula One - Official Site (Video)

Oscar Piastri scored his best result of the season with second place in Monaco, and admitted he didn’t quite have enough to pass eventual winner Charles Leclerc – especially after his McLaren picked up damage in a Lap 1 tangle with Carlos Sainz.

‘Best result of the season’;

https://www.formula1.com/en/video/pi...33931865905979


Piastri: ‘I didn’t have an answer’ as early damage costs him late on in the Monaco GP
Piastri admitted that the slow pace at the start of the Monaco Grand Prix helped him nurse the damage to his McLaren
May 27, 2024
Oliver Brindle
FormulaNerds

McLaren driver Oscar Piastri was “very happy with the podium” at the Monaco Grand Prix but suggested that early damage in the race cost him a chance at a first win in F1. Piastri got off the line well, but a brave Carlos Sainz appeared down the inside of the Australian. Both cars went into Turn 1 wheel to wheel, and contact was made, leaving the Ferrari driver with a puncture and the McLaren with a damaged floor.

However, there was a sense of relief for both drivers as a bigger crash behind between the two Haas’ and the Red Bull of Sergio Perez saw a red flag brought out. Piastri held on to second on the restart and maintained his runner-up spot to the finish due to the difficulties of overtaking around the principality.

Speaking to F1, Piastri said: “I mean, obviously very happy with the podium; it’s been a great weekend from start to finish, I feel like. It’s Nice to finally get a result on the board. I feel like the last few weeks we’ve been very, very strong, with no results to show. And today, to finish second is a great result for everybody involved, so very happy with that, I tried my best to try to sneak past – but just too difficult.”

‘I didn’t have an answer’;

https://www.formulanerds.com/news/pi...the-monaco-gp/


Damage from “very small” Sainz contact initially cost up to 0.5s per lap – McLaren
27th May 2024, 13:26
Written by Keith Collantine
RaceFans

McLaren said the contact between Carlos Sainz Jnr and Oscar Piastri at the start of the race did enough damage to cost their driver half a second per lap. “The team told me how much downforce I was losing before we tried to fix it and it was a pretty big number,” he said. “I don’t know what we managed to get it down to but obviously the length of the red flag helped us out quite a lot there.”

Despite his team’s repair job, Piastri wasn’t able to maintain the pace of his closest rivals at the end of the race. “Being in Monaco, it’s probably the one track where having damage doesn’t hurt you as much,” he said. “It was a very, very small touch. But with these cars, especially with the floor being so sensitive to the downforce it generates, it can ruin your race very easily. So I was very happy we could try and fix it.”

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said the team’s repair work halved the initial performance loss Piastri suffered from the original contact. “As soon as the collision happened we observed the 20 points [of downforce] down, which here in Monaco is about half a second. But then, thanks to the red flag, we were in condition to make some repairs to the floor. The side wing of the floor was broken so we repaired it, we didn’t fix it entirely and we changed the sidepod that was broken as well. So overall the deficit was about 10 points for the entire race, which is a couple of tenths, maybe two-tenths and a half.”

‘Team’s repair work halved the initial performance loss’;

https://www.racefans.net/2024/05/27/...r-lap-mclaren/


Piastri relief after damage to 'sensitive part' in Monaco
Oscar Piastri has underlined multiple factors that minimised the effect of his floor damage at Monaco.
27 May 2024, 12:20PM
Samuel Coop
RacingNews365

Oscar Piastri has highlighted the minimising factors that allowed him to take second-place at the Monaco Grand Prix, despite damage to a "sensitive" part. The 23-year-old took damage to his floor at the start of the race before the red flag intervention for the incident between Sergio Perez and the two Haas'. This allowed McLaren to fix his floor as best it could during the 45 minute delay to proceedings in Monte Carlo.

With tyre management a concern, the leading quartet kept the slower-than-usual pace - something that prevented Piastri from accurately accessing the damage to his car. "It was okay," he replied when asked how the performance of his McLaren was after the incident with Sainz. "I think for the first half of the race, it was impossible to tell what the penalty of that was.”

"I think towards the end, probably a combination of trying to keep the pace of the race reasonably quick, plus the floor, [I] just struggled a little bit towards the end, but overall pretty happy with it. And yeah, the last 10 laps or so, I was pretty happy we were in Monaco."

‘Piastri relief’;

https://racingnews365.com/piastri-re...part-in-monaco


‘Oscar, we do see the impact of the damage’: Why Piastri’s third F1 podium is his most telling yet
May 27, 2024 — 1.22am
By Russell Bennett and Jon Pierik
WA Today

It was Piastri’s nerves of steel in his McLaren that emerged as one of the biggest talking points of the race. The notoriously unforgiving street circuit claimed its first victims after just the first corner on the first lap, and Piastri could so easily have joined Nico Hulkenberg, Sergio Perez and Kevin Magnussen on the sidelines.

While Sky Sports F1 analyst and former driver Martin Brundle was at times exasperated by the lack of overtaking in the race – at one stage saying: “The one DRS [overtaking] zone here is about as useful as a chocolate fireguard” – even he was captivated by the “go slow” strategy employed at stages by Ferrari.
It was done not only to preserve Leclerc’s tyres, but also to keep the other leaders of the field, including Piastri, Sainz, and Norris, bunched behind him, so they couldn’t afford the gamble of a secondary pitstop to change on to newer, quicker rubber.

“Oscar, we do see the impact of the damage,” the radio message, broadcast by Sky F1, said. “[But] it looks like the aero balance is sensible at least.” Following the race, a matter-of-fact Piastri was full of praise for Leclerc’s win, but admitted finishing second had left him wondering might have been had he not fallen 0.154 seconds short of Leclerc in qualifying to start in second spot.

‘Piastri’s third F1 podium’;

https://www.watoday.com.au/sport/mot...26-p5jgsn.html