Piastri finished 13th in last weekend’s Miami Grand Prix, a race won by his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris.
McLaren introduced a significant upgrade package for the event, though it was not evenly applied across its two cars.
While Norris had the full complement of components, team boss Andrea Stella admitted Piastri had only half the package.
It’s not the first time the Australian has been forced to wait for components, Norris having also been preferred for the debut of what essentially amounted to a b-spec car in Austria last year.
But the 23-year-old’s reaction was telling, according to Stella.
“He also comes off of [Miami] having proven once again how strong a team player he is,” he said of Piastri.
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“Clearly, when I told him, ‘Oscar, we are going to give the sidepods and the floor to Lando’, he wasn’t the happiest, you know, in the bottom of his heart.
“But at no point, he made this decision difficult. At no point, he said like, ‘Oh, but why?’
“He understood the reasoning and he was immediately supportive, like all the entourage around Oscar.
“So, I think he comes away with a lot of positives.”
That Piastri was unable to record points in Miami does not, for Stella, detract from the quality of his performance.
The McLaren team boss heralded his single lap pace, and the fact he out-qualified Norris for the Sprint and was within a tenth of a second of him in qualifying.
Piastri also raced strongly in the opening stages, charging from sixth on the grid to second on the road behind Max Verstappen.
His race promised more, before an ill-timed Safety Car and clumsy overtake from Carlos Sainz hampered his chances.
“Carlos, he was a little late in braking, he had a bit of an oversteer,” Stella noted.
“I think that was a really racing incident and it doesn’t detract anything of the weekend that Oscar has been able to pull off.”
McLaren holds a comfortable third in the constructors’ championship behind Red Bull Racing and Ferrari, while Piastri sits sixth on 41 points from the opening six races.
Formula 1 heads to Imola for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix next weekend, a venue at which McLaren has traditionally proved especially competitive.
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