McLaren Formula 1 driver Oscar Piastri has revealed details of a rib injury that hampered him before the summer break.
The Australia suffered a broken rib around the time of the Spain/Austria/Britain triple header, simply due to the forces involved in driving the MCL38.
Changes to his seat have improved the situation, and having successfully healed the rib is no longer an issue.
“It was just from driving,” said the Australian. “You could say we put so much downforce on the car!
“But just from driving. You make the seat obviously at the start of the year. And sometimes you get it a little bit wrong, and some tracks don’t expose it.
“But I think going from Barcelona, Austria, Silverstone, three pretty hardcore tracks – so just a bit of a pressure point, and eventually my rib gave up. Butt it’s all good again now, and we’ve changed the seat and fixed it immediately pretty much.”
Piastri says that the injury was only properly diagnosed after the British GP.
“The scan was the day after Silverstone, but it was definitely broken before Silverstone,” he noted. “Definitely it was at some point around Austria.
“I think it was probably a bit disturbed in Barcelona, and in Austria afterwards, it was pretty painful, and Silverstone was a pretty, pretty nasty few days. But we made some changes, and it was already getting better, even with driving.”
He added: “I think we identified what we could change on the seat. And even with it being broken, the pain subsided a lot once we changed a few things.
“So it was getting better, even with driving around Budapest and Spa was not getting any worse. It was actually getting better. So I think we already changed what went on. So fully back to normal.”
Piastri, who was second fastest in FP2 at Zandvoort, is confident that McLaren will have a good second half of the season.
“I think we’re in a strong place, definitely,” he said. “I think the gap has obviously been shrinking for the last seven or eight races. I think we’ve got a lot of momentum. And clearly our car is performing very well.
“I’m certainly not counting Red Bull out at all. Max has been doing a great job. I would say Sergio has gone through a similar run of form in the past, and then come out of it and scored a lot more points.
“So we’ll see. It’s definitely not going to be an easy battle. I don’t think we’re necessarily favourites for it, but I think we have a strong chance of being able to pull it off.”
Piastri doesn’t expect to be called on to help Lando Norris’s title campaign, at least in the short term.
“I’m not that far behind Lando in the standings,” he said. “If the call comes later in the year and it’s a realistic shot, then I’ll do my part for the team.
“But I think at the moment the gap is pretty big for both of us, so we’ll focus on just trying to do the best job we can every week, and see where we end up a bit later in the year.”
