Oscar Piastri finished second to Charles Leclerc in the Italian Grand Prix, trailing the Ferrari driver to the flag by 2.6s.
The Australian had chased down a sizeable lead following his second stop after Leclerc gambled on a one-stop approach.
It left Piastri with an 18.5s deficit to chase down in 15 laps.
His cause wasn’t helped by traffic in the final laps, losing time as he navigated his way beyond Stroll and Esteban Ocon.
He also spent the better part of a lap behind Carlos Sainz before passing the Ferrari for second place into the Ascari chicane on Lap 45.
It was an exchange that cost him another valuable second.
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Combined with an eight-tenth loss in the pit lane during his second stop, in perfect conditions the Australian could have caught Leclerc.
“I asked basically straight away what pace I needed to do to go and get Charles,” Piastri said.
“The pace I needed was basically what I did for the first few laps. And at that point, I was pretty optimistic.
“I lost a decent amount of time behind Carlos. You had Stroll driving like it was his first go-kart race and I don’t know what went through his brain when he saw his blue flag. That cost another second.
“I needed that stint to be perfect to win that race and those little things are ultimately what cost us a bit of a chance,” he added.
“It would have been a long shot anyway, but it was certainly not far off from being able to achieve it.
“I was pushing flat out to try and do it.
“I couldn’t have gone any faster than that. Just came up a bit short.
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Piastri bolted on a second set of hard compound tyres for the 15-lap run to the flag, allowing him to push as hard as he could in pursuit of Leclerc.
The Monegasque had fitted his tyres on Lap 15, and for a time had struggled with graining before they cleaned up.
However, his pace on a well-used set of tyres was no match for Piastri, though his track position ultimately proved enough to held on.
“Before the race, if you would have asked me, the one-stop was definitely the thing I wanted to do,” Leclerc said after claiming his second Italian Grand Prix win for Ferrari..
“After 10 laps, I think we saw that Red Bull started to struggle with the front left on the hard and there we started to doubt the one-stop.
“We thought that it would be a lot more difficult because we thought that the hard would be a more difficult tyre to bring to the end.
“However, as soon as I put it [on], I still thought that this was a possibility.
“When Oscar pitted two or three laps after that, I felt like I had more grip not having a car in front, especially on the front tyres, and that’s where I really thought that the one-stop, we could make it work.”
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