Oscar Piastri takes aim at Lance Stroll for ‘driving like it was his first go-kart race’

Oscar Piastri has taken a swipe at Lance Stroll for “driving like it was his first go-kart race” after being shown blue flags during the F1 Italian Grand Prix.

The McLaren driver was on a two-stop strategy and rapidly hunting down Charles Leclerc, who pulled off an ambitious one-stop, in a late battle for the win in Sunday’s grand prix at Monza.

Piastri ultimately had to settle with second, falling just 2.6 seconds short of Leclerc at the chequered flag, having lost crucial time overtaking Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and when getting past backmarkers including Aston Martin’s Stroll.

“I asked basically straightaway what pace I needed to do to go and get Charles,” Piastri told media including Crash.net in the post-race press conference.

“The pace I needed was basically what I did for the first few laps. At that point I was pretty optimistic. I lost a decent amount of time being Carlos.

“You had Stroll driving like it was his first go-kart race. I don’t know what went through his brain when he saw his blue flag, but that cost another second.

“I needed that stint to be perfect to win that race and those little things cost us a bit of a chance. It would have been a long shot anyway, but yeah, it was certainly not far off being able to achieve it.

“I was pushing flat-out and I couldn’t have gone any faster than that. Yup, just came up a bit short.”

Asked how seriously he had considered a one-stop strategy, Piastri replied: “Clearly not as seriously as I needed to. I think for me it was a big risk to do that.

“The graining of the tyres has been a big topic all weekend. In practice, once you got graining, it was basically game over. Even in the first stint on the mediums it was pretty difficult.

“When we made the second stop for myself, my front left tyre was pretty heavily grained. I was going slower and slower. So it seemed like a sensible decision to pit again. I guess nobody really expected the graining to clear up on Charles.

“So yeah. In hindsight, clearly stopping once was the right thing to do. But from Lap 1 in the race, with all the information that we’d gathered through the weekend, it seemed incredibly risky.

“That’s kind of the blessing and the curse of leading the race, or being at the front full stop. The guys behind you can react to what you do, and for Charles, if he did a two stop, he would have locked in third, and if he did a one-stop and he fell off the cliff, he still would have finished third.

"Of course he pulled the one-stop off, and the Ferrari looked like the hero today. Obviously it hurts at the moment, but in the moment, it was the right thing to do.”