‘Stroll driving like a karting rookie’ a factor in Monza defeat

Oscar Piastri has hit out at Lance Stroll after losing time behind the backmarker Aston Martin in Formula 1’s Italian Grand Prix.

Piastri was chasing Charles Leclerc’s leading Ferrari after making a second pitstop while the Monegasque was attempting to eke out tyre life on a one-stop strategy.

After losing some two seconds when attacking and overtaking Carlos Sainz, Piastri still had an eight-second deficit to overcome on Leclerc when he found himself behind Stroll on lap 49 and conceded further time to the frontrunner, ending up 2.6 seconds off under the chequered flag.

“I asked basically straight away what pace I needed to do to go and get Charles,” Piastri said, reflecting on his last stint. “And the pace I needed was basically what I did for the first few laps. And at that point, I was pretty optimistic.

“You know, I lost a decent amount of time behind Carlos. You had Stroll driving like it was his first go-kart race and I don’t know what went through his brain when he saw his blue flag. That cost another second.

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

“I was pushing flat out to try and do it. I couldn’t have gone any faster than that. So yep, just came up a bit short.”

Onboard footage shows Stroll actually let Piastri through when the blue flag was waved to him for the first time, but the Canadian stayed on the outside coming into Variante Ascari, so the McLaren driver was unable to take the ideal line and had to brake on the inside. This was Piastri’s slowest lap after he cleared Sainz, with a half-second loss in the last sector.

The Australian still doesn’t have too many regrets – not even in terms of strategy. Despite McLaren’s two-stop tactic not paying off, Piastri explained that merely slowing down wouldn’t have sufficed to make a one-stop work out.

“If the information I got is right, on the radio, then it wasn’t really a matter of driving slower,” he added. “It was just kind of sticking with the graining and getting through it.

“Given in practice when that happened you basically couldn’t hit the brake pedal because you turned your front left into a 50-cent coin, it seemed like a very risky thing to do…