The Miami Grand Prix was a race to forget for Oscar Piastri whose afternoon was undermined by a brake-by-wire issue on his McLaren MCL-60.
The Woking-based outfit was among the laggards in qualifying, with Lando Norris and Piastri lining up respectively P16 and P19 on last Sunday's grid.
To help their cause, both McLaren drivers opted to start their race on the soft tyre.
While Norris lost ground on the opening lap following a contact at the first corner with Nyck de Vries, the singular compound choice paid off for Piastri who clocked in 14th at the end of the first lap.
However, the aggressive strategy implied an early switch to the hard rubber, which Piastri undertook after just five laps. But a few laps into his stint, issues emerged.
"Well, it worked on the first lap," he said.
"I gained a few positions off the start but about three or four laps after the pit stop I had a brake-by-wire failure with some other failures. So that was why the pace was so terrible.
"After that, the brake pedal was about two metres long it felt like, amongst other things.
"It was sudden, hit the brakes one lap and the brake pedal just went to the floor. I’m not sure if it was just BBW or if we had some other issues as well going on so we need to understand what went wrong."
Hindered by the technical setback on his car, Piastri performed to the best of his ability, completing the full race distance as he nursed his car home to P19, aided by his command of the switches on his steering wheel that helped mitigate his issues.
"To be honest, we weren’t going to get into the points on pace today," he admitted. "Tried something different, didn’t really work.
"So yeah, challenging afternoon but we had to try something on the strategy.
"It was good switch practice that’s for sure! I’m glad we did extensive work on that in testing it paid off today."
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