F1 News, Reports and Race Results

No penalty for Piastri for alleged impeding incident

McLaren's Oscar Piastri scored a brilliant third place on the grid for tomorrow's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, but had to head to the stewards office and mount a defence of his session to ensure that he kept it.

Piastri was placed under investigation over an incident that took place in the third round of qualifying. he was on a slow lap when he moved from the right hand side of the track to the left at turn 4.

He did so as Pierre Gasly came over the crest of turn 3 while on a high speed flying lap, and there was a scary near-miss moment for both drivers. Fortunately there was no contact, although Gasly's flying lap was affected.

Stewards noted the incident for further investigation after the end of the session, but concluded that no penalty was appropriate on this occasion, as Gasly himself said he was not impeded.

The Alpine driver kept 100 per cent throttle throughout, and had set his fastest mini-sector as he passed the McLaren. Gasly went on to finish the session in tenth while Piastri will start from P3.

Piastri was delighted with his final lap in qualifying, after admitting it was the first all weekend where he hadn't made a mistake.

"It's extremely tight this weekend, it's been a bit of a messy one. The pace has been there, just a lot of mistakes," he explained to the media in the paddock.

“I think before qualifying I hadn’t done a lap without quite a major mistake this weekend," he said. "I was struggling to get everything together. I think I did a much better job of that in qualifying.”

“I was struggling a little bit in the first two parts of quali, or certainly the first part," he continued. “We’ve been quick in sector 1 all weekend, that seems to just be our happy place here, but everything else is a bit up and down.

The up-and-down nature of practice and qualifying meant that the outlook for tomorrow's race is very much open to doubt. Max verstappen and Charles Leclerc will start ahead of Piastri, with George Russell alongside on row two.

“Russell’s been looking extremely quick in all of the practices and Max said he was struggling a bit, so it’s been a bit hard to get a read on where everyone actually sits," Piastri acknowledged.

He's hoping that Yas Marina is more to the McLaren's liking that last weekend's race in Las Vegas.

“We knew Vegas was going to be a bit of a struggle for us, going into the weekend,” he said. “We got a few things wrong in qualifying [in Vegas] that made it seem worse than it actually was, but we knew here would be a lot better.

"The normal stuff that we like – the medium-speed corners, high-speed corners – is where I think we’re strongest, and the slow stuff is where we struggle a bit more.”

“The pace has been good the whole weekend [but] it was a bit of a surprise for me just how tight everything was at the start of qualifying. I think it was like four-tenths from first to 15th in Q1.

"It would have been one last corner to get to the front, so happy with that the car is very quick this weekend compared to Vegas.

"You couldn’t afford to make a mistake, but no - we’re at the pointy end and nice to be back in the top three.”

Piastri's team mate Lando Norris had looked on course to secure a front row spot before making a costly slide in turn 13 on his final run of the day. “I don’t know what happened to Lando on the last lap,” Piastri commented.

As a result, Norris didn't improve his existing lap time and will start tomorrow's final race of the season from fifth place, immediately behind Piastri.

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.

Recent Posts

Sao Paulo GP qualifying postponed after repeated delays

The FIA has postponed Saturday’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix qualifying session due to adverse weather…

4 mins ago

McLaren: Team orders always ‘make life difficult for ourselves’

McLaren's successful 1-2 finish in the Brazilian Sprint race came with a dose of complexity,…

3 hours ago

Verstappen demoted to P4 following VSC infringement in Sprint

Max Verstappen has been demoted from third to fourth in the final standings of Saturday’s…

3 hours ago

Norris thanks Piastri for handing Sprint win, but not ‘proud’

Lando Norris secured victory in Saturday's Sprint event in Sao Paulo thanks to a McLaren…

5 hours ago

São Paulo GP: Norris handed sprint win by Piastri

McLaren clinched a valuable 1-2 sweep of the São Paulo sprint race, with polesitter Oscar…

5 hours ago

2024 São Paulo Grand Prix - Sprint Race results

Full results from the Sprint race for the São Paulo Grand Prix at São Paulo,…

5 hours ago