‘Double pit’ missed, Button critical of Piastri: “He could have slowed down”

Imperfect strategy

One of the crucial moments, from a strategic point of view, in the British GP was the McLaren’s missed double stop. At that moment Norris and Piastri were one behind the other in first and second position and in apparent control of the race. However, the team did not want to stop the two drivers together to put them both on intermediate tyres, but gave priority to Norris, leaving Piastri one more lap on the track with slick tyres on the track that was getting wet. This move cost the Australian four positions, causing him to drop from second to sixth place for the time being.

Another missed opportunity

After the race, Andrea Stella acknowledged the strategic error in not making the double stopas Mercedes did with Hamilton and Russell, but not everyone believes that the responsibility for what happened is only the team’s. The former driver of the Woking team, Jenson Buttonhas in fact attributed at least part of the blame lies with Piastri himselfas revealed by the journalist of Sky Sports F1 Rachel Brookes, who was watching the race with the 2009 world champion.

“While we were watching Oscar [Piastri] who was trying to battle with Lando for the position I thought: ‘Wait a moment’. Sure, he would have had the chance to pit first if he was ahead on the track, but the most important thing is not to have to do another lap, so you slow down, give the team the margin to do the double stop and come back in. I was watching the scene with Jenson [Button] at that moment and that’s exactly what we were thinking: make Oscar slow down and do a double stop. When you consider all of this, this is a huge learning curve for many team members.“, commented Brookes. A ‘collective’ carelessness that is part of a long series of errors by drivers and teams, which – as far as the ‘Norris side’ is concerned – cost him at least sixty points in the championship.