Oscar Piastri urged to ‘bang the table’ when he’s ‘victimised’ by McLaren strategy

Strategy cost Oscar Piastri at the British Grand Prix

Oscar Piastri has been told to “bang his fist on the table” and tell McLaren no more after the call not to double-stack him at Silverstone cost him a possible win.

Lining up third and fifth for the British Grand Prix with Lando Norris ahead of his team-mate, the McLarens found themselves first and second as their MCL38s stuck to the track when the rain came down.

Oscar Piastri urged to ‘bang the table’

But separated by less than two seconds, when it finally came time to swap their slicks for intermediates, McLaren had to decide between double-stacking the drivers or leaving Piastri out for another lap.

They went with the second option.

And as the Aussie slipped and slid his way around the track, he lost time to the frontrunners and was down in sixth place after his pit stop.

He recovered to finish fourth, but it was a case of what could’ve been had McLaren made a better strategy call.

Dutch pundit Jack Plooij says it’s time for Piastri to tell his team no more as this isn’t the first time since joining McLaren that a strategy call has gone against him.

“What Oscar still misses a bit – but I think I will give him a course sometime – is that he always remains so cool,” Plooij told Ziggo Sport Race Café.

“It’s not just about the on-board radios, but about the debriefs.

“It’s time for him to bang his fist on the table. At times when he is being victimised, he must tell the team, ‘We are not going to do this anymore, friends’.

“We’re going to give him a course.”

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Zak Brown: I think we ultimately got it wrong

McLaren team boss Zak Brown admits in “hindsight” McLaren got it “wrong” at Silverstone, not only not double-stacking Piastri but also by putting Norris on the wrong tyres for the final stint.

He also lost out on a possible win, finishing third behind Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.

“It was tough. Hindsight’s 20/20, as they say. I think we ultimately got it wrong,” he said as per the official F1 website. “I think both our drivers could have won there. They did an excellent job.

“When you’re leading the race, you also have to kind of take the first decision, so it’s a little bit easier to key off of what others did, when early on Lando and Oscar were right next to each other.

“Obviously [if you] double-stack them you’re going to lose about five seconds – turns out Oscar lost a lot more time because the track was deteriorating, so losing the five seconds there would have been a better call but, again, you don’t really know because you’re the lead car, so you’re going to be the first to find out the weather.

“And then there at the end, I think maybe mediums would have been a better strategy, as we saw on Oscar. Oscar was absolutely flying there, Max was flying on the hards, and softs were going to struggle. We had a set of mediums, so we’ll just go back and review it.

“I think the upside is we got more points than all of our competitors, we were on the podium, it was an exciting race. You need to make sure as well that, when you review, that it’s good learning for everyone involved. So, we review, learn, and we go again.”

McLaren closed the gap to Ferrari to just seven points in the Constructors’ Championship with their three-four finish at Silverstone.

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