Oscar Piastri had to give his all to catch Charles Leclerc in the closing stages of Monza, but encountered a few obstacles in the process
Oscar Piastri needed every tenth of a second to catch Charles Leclerc at the front in the closing stages of the Monza Formula 1 race, but the Australian’s chase was repeatedly hampered by other drivers – including Lance Stroll, who Piastri said drove as if he was in his first kart race
Piastri had to make up 19 seconds in the final 15 laps. The McLaren driver had just come in for his second and final pit stop, while Ferrari took a risk with Leclerc and tried to go through with just one stop – too risky for McLaren due to the graining.
On fresh tires, Piastri’s task was now to close the gap in time. “I immediately asked myself what pace I would have to drive to catch Charles,” Piastri explains. “And the pace I needed was basically the one I had set in the first few laps. And I was pretty optimistic at the time.”
After three laps he had already made up four seconds, but ahead of him was his first major problem: Carlos Sainz had also gone for a stop and was shielding his Ferrari team-mate – but fair play, after all it was a straight fight for position.
“I lost a lot of time behind Carlos,” says Piastri, but once he had overtaken the Spaniard, he still had seven laps to go to make up eleven seconds
LAP 45 / 53
PIASTRI INTO SECOND!!!
He passes Sainz on the OUTSIDE into Ascari and sets off in pursuit of Leclerc in the other Ferrari! F1 ItalianGP pic.twitter.com/jJatFbhJ9q
– Formula 1 (@F1) September 1, 2024
Around a second a lap faster than Leclerc, but that would not be enough. And then, from his point of view, Lance Stroll was not exactly clever when lapping: “Stroll drove as if it was his first kart race,” complained Piastri. “I don’t know what was going on in his head when he saw the blue flag. That cost him another second.”
From Stroll’s onboard footage, it can be seen that the Canadian actually let the McLaren pass at the first blue flag – albeit a little awkwardly, as Stroll stayed on the outside before the Ascari variant, meaning Piastri had to brake for the fast corner passage from the inside.
In the end, his final sector of the lap was half a second slower than the lap before.
“The stint had to be perfect to win the race and it’s these little things that cost us a chance in the end,” he says. “Yes, it would have been difficult, but I wasn’t far away from being able to do it.”
“I went full throttle to make it and couldn’t have gone any faster. But it wasn’t quite enough,” said Piastri. In the end, he was 2.664 seconds down on the Ferrari at the finish line
