F1 | Plates: lost 20 load points in contact with Sainz

Oscar Piastri continues in his growth process and the second place obtained in Monte-Carlo could be one of the necessary steps to see him reach where everyone now expects to see him: among the first consistently and, above all, a driver capable of competing in the you improve victory every weekend.

The Australian, regardless of the result obtained, was very good at managing a less than ideal situation in last Sunday’s race. The contact made at the first corner, the Sainte Devote, shortly after the start with Carlos Sainz damaged the bottom of his MCL38, causing him to lose several points of aerodynamic load

“Regarding Oscar’s damage, as soon as the collision occurred, we looked at the 20-point deficit, which here in Monaco corresponds to about half a second,” said Andrea Stella, McLaren team principal, once the race was over .

“But then, thanks to the red flag, we were able to make some repairs to the bottom because the right side part of the bottom itself was broken. We repaired it, but not completely. And we also changed the side prop which was broken” .

Thanks to the red flag triggered by the terrible accident that occurred to Sergio Perez, the McLaren mechanics were able to put a stop to the situation. Piastri, however, had to restart the race with a surface that was not in perfect condition, so much so that Stella quantified in 10 load points – a couple of tenths per lap – what Oscar had to manage during the race.

“Overall, the deficit was about 10 points for the whole race, which is a couple of tenths, maybe two and a half tenths.”

“Obviously it made us a little bit more nervous about whether we could keep the tires in a good situation, in a good condition, because the car was a little bit damaged, but Oscar managed to do that and in the end, the damage wasn’t influential for the final result”.

Stella was then able to make a comparison between the current situation in which McLaren finds itself with the innovations introduced in Miami on the MCL38 compared to the problems noted on last year’s MCL60.

“In terms of the characteristics of the updated car compared to last year, what we can see and what we expected is just more downforce in all conditions.”

“The car, compared to what we expected, seems to behave well even at low speeds, perhaps a little more than we had predicted based on our development tools. And this is good news.”

“Obviously this is an aspect that we need to understand very well, in order to have the right information to develop further in this direction, because it seems to be very advantageous for lap times and also seems to make us competitive on circuits with low speed corners “.