F1 | Plates: The broken rib was caused by the poorly fitted seat

Oscar Piastri has revealed that a poorly fitted seat was the cause of the fractured rib he had to live with for at least three races before Formula 1’s summer break. After the Belgian Grand Prix, the McLaren Australian revealed that he had broken a rib and raced with it during his first win in Hungary.

Speaking for the first time about the cause of the problem, Piastri said he suspected his custom-made seat had created a pressure point. “The seat is made, obviously, at the beginning of the year and sometimes you get it a little bit wrong,” he said. “Some tracks don’t expose you to that mistake, but I think when you go to tracks like Barcelona, ​​Austria and Silverstone, those are three very tough tracks.”

“So it was just a pressure point that finally gave way. But now everything is fine again. We changed the seat and fixed it immediately. So yeah, everything is back to normal.”

Piastri said he only discovered the rib fracture after the British Grand Prix, but suspects it occurred a few races earlier. “The CT scan was done the day after Silverstone, but the fracture was definitely earlier,” he said.

When asked how many races he thinks he had it for, Piastri replied: “Three, I would say. But yeah, it definitely happened at some point around Austria.”

“I think in Barcelona it was a nuisance, and then in Austria it was quite painful. So it was quite bad for a few days. But yeah, we made some changes and the situation was already improving with the driving as well. So it’s all good.”

Piastri said there was nothing he could physically do to stop the problem, but he felt that the changes already made to the seat had calmed things down.

“I think we figured out what changes to make to the seat and, even though the rib was broken, the pain eased a lot once we changed a few things,” he added. “Even driving in Budapest and Spa the pain didn’t get worse, it got better.”