Oscar Piastri verdict on Lindblad clash revealed after FIA penalty decision

Oscar Piastri has insisted that he couldn’t have done “much more” to avoid the clash with Arvid Lindblad that landed him a costly penalty in the Mexico City Grand Prix.

Piastri crossed the line in seventh place at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, but an incident in the closing exchanges with Lindblad prompted the stewards to add 10 seconds to his overall race time, dropping him outside the points to 13th instead.

Oscar Piastri loses Mexico points after Lindblad clash

Having started down in 12th after a shock Q2 exit in qualifying, Piastri made up three spots on the first lap alone and then dispatched both Franco Colapinto and Lindblad in relatively quick succession.

However, Valtteri Bottas’ hefty crash on Lap 44 triggered a stoppage, and on the subsequent standing restart, Lindblad propelled his Racing Bulls back ahead of the McLaren.

Piastri had endured 12 laps behind his rival when he spied the chance to make a move around the outside of Turn 1; Lindblad, though, held his ground, and the pair collided as the gap narrowed going into Turn 2, sending the Racing Bulls into the wall.

“I tried to go up the inside actually, and then he shut the door very, very late,” Piastri recalled. “So I had to kind of avoid him and end up on the outside.

“I tried from there, and obviously he pushed me pretty wide, and at that point I knew I was not going to completely overtake. So I was trying to get out, but he pushed me so far wide that I couldn’t go any further left, and we just interlocked wheels, and that was the end result, of course.”

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Explaining the reason that Piastri was penalised, the stewards determined that he had not claimed the right to the corner, and thus the onus was on him to avoid the contact.

Asked whether he thought his McLaren was far enough alongside that he was entitled to racing room under the current racing guidelines, Piastri replied: “It’s always tricky.

“I was very close to alongside, and I was kind of there because I was avoiding a crash in the first place.

“A tricky one, but I think when we actually made contact, we were both going straight. It wasn’t like I tried to stick my nose into Turn 2 and stuck my nose where I shouldn’t. I was trying to concede the position, and I was already off the track, so I couldn’t really do much more than that.”

Piastri, now on a 15-race streak without a podium, was even more disappointed to leave the weekend empty-handed, given that he had nursed a wounded car to the end.

“I tried to get a number on how much damage I had,” he said. “I could kind of sense in Tom [Stallard, Piastri’s race engineer]’s voice that we had a lot of damage.

“When I looked at the car afterwards, it was pretty significant, so it was hard work. I think we had enough pace to be able to hang on reasonably comfortably in the end, but yeah, not the easiest last 10 laps for sure.”

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