Oscar Piastri reveals reason behind Canada GP crash in apology to Alex Albon

Oscar Piastri said a level of grip ‘like nothing I’ve driven before’ was behind his crash into the side of Alex Albon during the Canadian Grand Prix.

As Piastri looked to recover from the incorrect starting tyre choice, his chance of points disappeared when he collided into the side of Albon and earned himself a 10-second time penalty.

Oscar Piastri blames grip for Alex Albon crash

Having pitted in the first lap to ditch the inters, Piastri was pushing to make his way up the field but went crashing into Albon’s sidepod after locking up into the hairpin.

The Williams driver was forced to retire, later saying he thought Piastri ‘got caught out’, and the Australian confirmed those suspicions by suggesting he had no grip.

“I thought it was going to be a bit tricky but possible,” he said of his chances to score points despite the early stop. “Just the level of grip out there was like nothing I’ve driven before, really.

“Just caught myself out, and obviously very sorry for Williams and Alex, because I wasn’t really trying to overtake him. Just locked up, and that was it. So one of those things.”

Piastri also defended the team’s decision to start on inters despite during the formation laps almost pleading with the pit wall to make a change and said he was initially amongst the group who said go with the non-slick tyre.

“It was a group call,” he said. “I was one of the people that said yes to the inters.

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“Between the anthem and getting in the car, it had gotten significantly wetter on the ground, and given how difficult getting to the grid was, I thought that the inters, if you could get temperature into them would be faster, that was our whole thinking, and then the rain stopped, so yeah, it was a bit of a shame.

“I think once we had inters on the car, I don’t think pitting at the end in the formation laps would have made that much of a difference, clearly, but we thought we were doing the safer thing and the right thing.”

Piastri is currently sixth in the Drivers’ Championship having looked to have ruined a corner following a difficult start to the year.

Despite the result, Piastri said there was some encouraging signs to take from the weekend and that “good progress” had been made.

“I think it was encouraging in qualifying to get a little bit closer,” he said. “We’ve got some homework to do on how to make the car even quicker, for sure.

“I think for myself today, aside, I thought it was a positive weekend from a few different areas, maybe not very spectacular in terms of results, but I felt like I made some good progress compared to Miami on a few things, so there’s always some positives in there, but you’ve got to look pretty hard.”

Read next: Red Bull post pokes fun at George Russell as FIA takes action over Canadian GP incident

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