Oscar Piastri says braking issues and an overall lack of speed in the latter stages contributed to a “tough day” at Interlagos that saw the McLaren driver finish in eighth place.
While team mate Lando Norris took pole Piastri could manage only P8 in the wet Q3 session, having struggled with a brake locking problem that persisted into the race.
He struggled to overtake, and eventually moved up to seventh when he nudge Liam Lawson into a spin.
That earned him a 10-second penalty, and having finished seventh on the road he then dropped behind Yuki Tsunoda in the final results.
“I think it was just a tough day from start to end,” he said. “I think qualifying, partly a mistake, partly a bit of a problem. And when you put the two together, it creates a big problem, and then we’re still struggling with that a bit in the race. But I think we were just slow.
“The first half of the race, we seemed very quick. Lando was stuck behind George. I was stuck behind Liam.
“I got Liam out of the way, not really in the way I intended. But yeah, I think the second half of the race, after the red flag, we were just slow. think both of us just struggled with pace, and that was a pretty tough 30 laps.”
Regarding the clash with Lawson he said: “I went for a move. I was stuck behind him for a long time.
“Didn’t really get far enough alongside, and I spoke to him about it, and he said he didn’t see me either, which, in those conditions is fair enough. But I think it was clearly my mistake. And the penalty was deserved. So just a tough day.”
He added: “Honestly, the toughest part of the race was behind the safety car trying to stay on the track. I think it kind of exposed a bit of the issue that we have with the wet tyre, when everyone is praying for a red flag, but refusing to go onto the wet tyre because it’s so bad.
“So a pretty dangerous situation to have cars literally struggling to stay on the track behind the safety car. But it’s not really anything new, so hopefully we can try and at least change it now.”
Earlier in the race he was powerless to keep the charging Max Verstappen behind.
“I just didn’t have enough pace at the beginning, but he seemed to be pretty much the only one that could actually overtake,” said the Australian.
“We were struggling with the brakes all day. We had a decent problem in qualifying that was the same in the race. So that certainly wasn’t helping things. One benefit for Max was going out so early, had a bunch of new inters, which I think probably helped a little bit.
“But I think he was just fast today. And the cards didn’t fall his way in qualifying with the red flag, they certainly did in the race. I think he was just quick and just had a good race.”
McLaren opted for high downforce for Sunday’s conditions, although Piastri didn’t blame that choice for the difficulty in overtaking.
“Top speed didn’t seem great, but I don’t think that was our biggest problem,” he said. “We were obviously gaining in the corners with the downforce we had, but clearly not enough. I think we need to understand a bit better, because the first half the race, we looked really quick, and then the second half, both cars seem to struggle a lot more.”
Elaborating on the wing level he added: “I’m not sure how limiting it was. You could argue with qualifying it helped with the extra downforce in the race. It should have helped in the majority of the lap, the first half of the race. Maybe you could argue it was holding us back a bit, because we were stuck behind cars.
“But the second half, we weren’t stuck behind cars. We were just slow. So I think it doesn’t really matter which rear wing we had on in the second half, we weren’t really going to finish any better.”
