Plates and the reminder of the past
Despite being born in 2001 Oscar Piastri knows very well what happened in Suzuka at the start of the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix, the penultimate of the season which expressed the definitive verdict on the championship fight between Alain Prost – reigning world champion with McLaren in 1989 who moved to Ferrari in 1990 – and Ayrton Senna, who remained to defend the colors of the Woking team.
In 1989 the World Championship was decided in Prost’s favor following a contact (and everything that resulted from it) between the Professor and Magic at the Triangle chicane. Twelve months later in Turn-1 Senna served his revenge ramming the Frenchman at the starta collision that led to the retirement of both, thus handing the world title to the Brazilian, the second world title of his career after the one in 1988. Prost, in fact, would never have been able to catch up with Senna even by winning in Adelaide in Australia with the driver’s retirement McLaren (a retirement that later occurred, with Prost third behind Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell).
In the press conference, Piastri explained that at a certain point after the traffic lights went out at the Japanese Grand Prix he realized he was in the same position Senna found himself in in 1990while Max Verstappen in this case played the role of Alain Prost.
“Looking back on it now I was in the perfect position to emulate Senna and Prostliterally perfect, it’s true, but I preferred to avoid it – the words of Piastri – I immediately realized that I had an excellent start, but I exaggerated a little too much on the accelerator pedal in the second part of the progression and at that point I realized that I wasn’t close enough to Max. Plus I saw that Lando Norris was arriving at full speed from the outside and at that point I preferred to accept climbing to third position, because it was the safest choice in that situation”.
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