“I think that ranks as probably my best win of my career.”
Idman.biz reports that this was said by Oscar Piastri from McLaren while talking about his success in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
In an interview with Auto Motor und Sport, the Australian pilot spoke about the ups and downs of the race:
“Trying to soak up that pressure for so long in that race, that was incredibly tough. In the first stint, when Charles was just pulling away pretty comfortably, I thought we were going to be second at best. Even Checo [Sergio Perez] was keeping me very honest, and I could see Carlos [Sainz] was very quick at the end of the medium stint. I saw an opportunity, or half an opportunity, after the pit stop and knew I had to try and take it. I knew that getting to the lead was going to be one thing but I knew I had my work cut out for me after that to try and try and stay there because I didn’t feel like we were the quickest in that first stint. So it was very hard work.
I think having clean air did help quite a bit, but that has to be one of the best races I’ve done. I felt a bit sorry for my race engineer, because I basically tried to [pass Leclerc] in the first stint and completely cooked my tyres. So my engineer came on the radio and said, let’s not do that again, basically, and I completely ignored him the next lap and and sent it down the inside. I felt like trying to stay back and wait for Charles to deg was never going to happen. I thought it was just going to secure us P2. I had a similar opportunity in the first stint and I felt like on Lap 2 or 3 I was just within DRS but didn’t fully capitalise on that opportunity, and I got the end of the straight thinking, ‘If I had have done a couple of things a bit differently here, I maybe had a chance’. So when I had a similar opportunity after the pit stop, I had to take it. If I didn’t take that opportunity, then I was never going to have another one. Credit to Charles, he was incredibly fair.
Maybe he thought I was going to sail on into the runoff, but I was pleasantly surprised that I actually made the corner. It was a high risk, high commitment move, but that’s what I needed to do to try and win the race, because, you know, I wasn’t really going to be that keen to finish second.The key was actually hanging on in Sector 2. I felt like, as long as I could keep the lead into Turn 1, then I felt like I could keep Charles behind. Turn 2 is a very, very slippery corner for some reason this weekend and if you could get good enough drive out of there, the straight is not quite long enough to have DRS really make an impact to catch back up. So, for me, just taking a lot of risk through the castle section is what I was trying to do, because I needed to try and make the gap from Turn 7 through the rest of the lap. I had a couple of close calls through the castle and Turn 15 as well, I think the guys probably need to put another rear corner on my car after after the race.
But that was where I was really trying to be fast and obviously get a good exit out of the last corner. I knew that getting into the lead was going to be let’s say 40 percent of the job, but I knew that hanging onto it was going to be 60 percent. I knew that I’d used the tyres pretty heavily to try and get in front and I knew what kind of impact that had in the first stint. I was just hoping that the clean air was going to help me stay ahead, and it probably did a little bit, but then obviously you lose a lot of time with DRS. Trying to keep Charles behind was incredibly stressful, I couldn’t make a single mistake. I made a couple but at a track like Baku, it’s impossible to be driving flat out and not make any. I was just fortunate that they weren’t big enough that it cost me. So, yeah, just the whole 30 laps where I was trying to keep Charles behind was incredibly, incredibly tough.”
Idman.biz
