A damaged floor inhibited Oscar Piastri in the Hungarian Grand Prix as the Australian recorded the fourth points finish of his F1 career.
Fifth at the Hungaroring comes on the heels of fourth in Britain last time out, and marks the first time the McLaren pilot has achieved back-to-back top-10 finishes.
Piastri started fourth in Hungary and ran second in the early stages behind Max Verstappen, having passed both Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton at the opening corner.
He fell behind his team-mate when McLaren boxed Norris earlier, affording him the undercut which translated into track position once the Melburnian pitted for the first time.
It was from there that Piastri began to lose time relative to his more experienced team-mate, a development the 22-year-old attributed to excessive tyre degradation.
“I think just tyre deg was the killer for me,” he ventured. “Not 100 percent sure why yet, clearly something for me to look at.
“I think it’s one of the first races where I’ve had a race with so much deg, multiple pit stops, so there’s plenty for me to learn.
“But I think that was the sole key to my race; I think I made life easy for myself in the first stint, and then it kind of unravelled from there.”
Team boss Andrea Stella, however, suggests Piastri is being harsh on himself and that there was a simpler reason why he struggled for pace and tyre grip.
Rather than burning up his tyres, the McLaren boss has suggested a damaged floor was the root cause.
“Oscar is a guy that doesn’t look for excuses,” Stella said.
“We think the damage happened actually running wide on a kerb – not necessarily, and only, when he went off track while fighting with [Sergio] Perez.
“So there may be both times that this damage happened to the car.
“Running over the kerb definitely here in Hungary creates damage to the floor,” he added when Speedcafe asked what damage Piastri had incurred.
“This happened in free practice at some stage during the weekend.
“We see it because the floor is fully instrumented; there are a lot of pressure sensors and you can see the trace of these pressure sensors changes, so you see that something has happened.
“And then you also measure the forces acting on the car, and we could see this not only in the pressure sensors but also on the forces measured through the pushrods.”
Piastri was still pleased with his result, reasoning that battling a somewhat damaged car and still recording a top-five result was a significant step for the team.
“Plenty of things to try and improve on but to have the struggles that I did and still come away with the top five is quite a nice position to be in,” he said.
“To be racing against those guys, and on merit, two weekends in a row now is very exciting,” Piastri added of going wheel to wheel with Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton.
“To have this kind of track, these kinds of conditions – which were conditions of our nightmares at the start of the season or even a few races ago – it’s full credit to the team of the turnaround we’ve managed to make.
“To have the struggles that I did, compared to Lando, and still finish fifth highlights what a good job the team have been doing with the development of the car.”
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