The first part of the season ended with two podiums for Oscar Platesone of which was particularly memorable for the young Australian driver, winner for the first time in F1 in Hungary. These appointments, together with the two previous ones, were not easy from a physical point of view for the McLaren driver, who had to deal with annoying pains for a broken left rib.
A problem, as explained by the 23-year-old of Italian origins, which even arose before the British Grand Prix GP at Silverstone: “He was certainly in Austria at some point. – he explained to the media about his injury ahead of this weekend’s Dutch GP – I think it was probably a bit bothersome in Barcelona, then in Austria, and it was quite painful in Silverstone. It was bad for a few days, but after some changes I felt better also riding, so everything went back to normal. We figured out what we could change on the seat and the pain eased a lot once we changed some things, so I was already improving from Budapest to now, it hasn’t gotten worse. Now I’m fine.”
McLaren, which, after the latest significant results that have brought the team to second position in the world championship Buildersis now indicated as the team in the best form, to the point of being able to set its sights on Red Bull in the next races: “I think that we are in a very strong position and that the gap has obviously narrowed in the last seven or eight races – he added – we have a lot of momentum and clearly our car is going very well. For sure I’m not ruling out Red Bull. Verstappen did a great job and I would say Perez has been through a number of similar moments in the past but he came out of it scoring a lot more points so we’ll see. It’s definitely not going to be an easy battle and I don’t think we’re necessarily the favourites for the championshipbut I think that we have a strong chance of succeeding. The first objective is to win the constructors’ championship and if we are closing the gap in this standings there is a good chance that Lando and I will also do the same in the drivers’ championship.”
Limited to the weekend of ZandvoortPiastri also expressed his opinion on the difficulties that the pilots may encounter, especially in the case of a wet track or gusts of wind: “It’s going to be incredibly tough. – he concluded – the amount of downforce you gain or, more importantly, lose, depending on the wind direction, in certain corners It will probably be like driving an F2 car. It’s a huge change and also very difficult for us, because obviously we can’t feel the wind very well. You can feel it quite well when it’s crosswind, but when it’s a headwind or a tailwind, it’s not always so easy to tell and if a gust comes at the wrong time, it’s completely out of your control in a way. I think it’s going to be quite an interesting day and an interesting weekend with the wind and the rain.”.
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