Oscar Piastri feels he had pace in hand to cover Lando Norris during the Dutch Grand Prix, and is “massively proud” of the way he progressed after a challenging start to the weekend.
A year ago, Piastri struggled compared to Norris at Zandvoort, but this weekend he took pole position by 0.012s and then led the entire race. Also setting the fastest lap, it marked his first Grand Slam of pole, victory, fastest lap and led every lap, and Piastri says he could respond to Norris’ threat before his teammate retired with a reliability issue.
“I think qualifying was the key this weekend,” Piastri said. “Through the free practice sessions, it was looking like a difficult Zandvoort again, but we chipped away, tried to find time, tweak the car here and there, but just tried to really improve how I was driving because, let’s be honest, it’s pretty hard to complain about the car we’ve got!
“So just tried to chip away with that and it came good when it mattered. And through the race, I felt like I had good pace as well and used that when I needed to. So massively proud of firstly myself, but also the whole team around me in turning it around from 12 months ago.
“It was a really good race. I felt like I was in control the whole time. Obviously, the restarts are always tough moments to get right, but I felt in control. Obviously, the ending was unfortunate for Lando and the team to not have a one-two when I think we really deserved it. But from my side, very proud of the week we put together, being quick when it mattered. So very happy.”
Championship leader Piastri’s year-on-year progress has been clear to see across his three seasons in Formula 1 so far, and he produced what team principal Andrea Stella called an “Oscar-like weekend” in the Netherlands.
“It’s happened a few times this year where it started a bit slow and then gotten better as the weekend’s gone on,” Piastri added. “The difference from this year to last year is last year, those weekends that started slow, the middle was slow, and the end was slow.
“I think it’s just been good to actually find the time as the weekend’s gone on. Is it an ideal way? Am I doing it on purpose? Not always. I’m trying to build up to things, of course, but was hoping to build up a bit quicker than I did this weekend. I got there just in the end in Q3, but I didn’t go into qualifying the most optimistic.
“So maybe a little bit slow to get there, but I felt very happy with where I was going into qualifying, not expecting the world, just trying to do my best and see what happened. And in the end that was enough, and a similar thing [in the race]. Very happy from that side of things, and I think that part is probably the ‘Oscar-like weekend’.”
