Piastri Criticizes Stroll After Chinese GP Collision

Oscar Piastri publicly criticized Lance Stroll for his role in their collision during the Chinese Grand Prix, highlighting the need for caution in tight corners.

Lance Stroll insisted after the Chinese Grand Prix race that he was not responsible for the collision with Daniel Ricciardo. The Aston Martin F1 driver, who hit the Australian, was even defended by his team for this race incident for which he was clearly responsible.

Ricciardo was annoyed, and so was Oscar Piastri, who was the collateral victim of the incident when his McLaren MCL38 was hit by his compatriot in trouble. Asked about Stroll’s excuses, who cited an accordion effect, the young Australian did not hesitate to criticize him.

“Yes, but all the others did not crash into each other,” said Piastri, before reminding that the hairpin before the restart zone was obviously a point to be wary of. “I think in that kind of corner, you always have to expect it.”

Asked about the severity of the impact, he confirms that it damaged the car: “Very, very violent. I looked at the car and my diffuser, I’m almost sure that’s not how the engineers designed it. So it’s not surprising that I lost so much pace from that point on, which is a shame because I think good points were at stake.”

Andrea Stella, the director of McLaren, confirmed that the difference in pace between the McLarens during the second part of the race was largely due to the damage on the MCL38 bearing number 81.

“Oscar had damage on the diffuser. He lost a lot of rear downforce, I would say about four-tenths of a second, something like that,” he said. “When we heard the figures, I was not very optimistic that we would have been able to maintain our positions as Oscar managed to do.”

“Even though his result is obviously less visible than Lando’s, I think he did a good job trying to understand how to drive the car while he had lost so much support. The car was very oversteering, with a loss of support on the rear axle, but he managed to adapt and keep Hamilton behind him, so that’s also a good result.”