F1 News
This is how Oscar Piastri felt after gifting Lando Norris the sprint win
Oscar Piastri has explained he was "fine" with handing over the sprint race victory to Lando Norris in Brazil. McLaren applied team orders to help Norris reduce the gap to Max Verstappen by one extra point in the World Championship. The gap now stands at 44 points with four Grands Prix and one sprint race remaining.
McLaren has faced scrutiny for several weeks now for not implementing team orders sooner to help Norris fight Verstappen. For some, this dated back to the Hungarian Grand Prix when Norris was forced to give the lead back to Piastri. The Australian admits they've been speaking about it for months, but this is the first time they enforced it.
How Piastri feels after the McLaren team orders
"It's not as fun as winning, but I think I know the position that we're in. We've been talking about this for months now and this is really the first time that we've had to enforce it. So, yes, I would have preferred to have won. But, again, it's a sprint. It's the same points for the team. And, being realistic, I don't have much to fight for in the driver's standings. So, we knew this is something that could and probably would happen at some point. But, I was fine with it," Piastri said.
With a radio call, McLaren had planned to make the switch on the last lap. But late yellow flags looked to threaten McLaren's plans. In the end, they made the switch just before the virtual safety car was introduced, but some expected it to be made much earlier. Piastri reiterated the thought process.
"The gap never really got big enough to do it at a convenient time, but that was always the plan at some stage. So, I think we pulled it off as well as we could. We got a bit close with Max [Verstappen] under the VSC, but still the most points for the team, which is of course what we want," Piastri concluded.