Oscar Piastri chewed on his brakes during the race in Miami, which were faulty
Oscar Piastri stated that he encountered a "major failure" of the electric brake control system in his McLaren for the majority of the Miami Grand Prix, which compromised his progress for Sunday's race.
The McLaren rookie had a disappointing afternoon in Florida, after gaining more positions than anyone else in the first lap. He overtook five cars at the beginning of the race in a promising start.
But then he lost pace and was overtaken by most of the other drivers, eventually finishing in second-to-last place, one lap behind Max Verstappen.
Piastri later revealed that it was a cable braking issue that was causing his lack of pace on Sunday, and team director Andrea Stella acknowledged that the young Australian had done an “incredible job” to race as he did with such a problem on the car.
“I had a lot of problems with the car during the race,” Oscar Piastri confessed to F1 TV after the race.
« We had a quite significant breakdown for six or seven laps on the cable brake system and the energy recovery system. So, I had to deal with a lot of issues afterwards ».
« I had a very good first round, which was the highlight of the weekend, I think. But yes, it was a frustrating afternoon trying to work around the issues. It has been a tough weekend, but I believe we are still very motivated to try to move the car further forward. I think Baku was a very different weekend from this one, where we were much faster, so we need to understand why this weekend has been good compared to our position and why this weekend is bad.
« It is evident that we need to solve the reliability issues and problems during the race, but I believe that the team spirit is still good. We have plenty of races left this year to try and improve our performances and achieve our goals. »
Complicated weekend for both McLarens
He was hit from behind at the start after Nyck de Vries locked up his wheels at turn 1.
“The day has been tough. We struggled to find the rhythm,” he declared.
« I had a good start, but we were hit from behind in turn 1, which set us back. We had tried a different strategy, which required something exciting to happen during the race, but it didn’t work out ».
McLaren remains in P5 in the constructors’ standings, but is now tied with Alpine with 14 points.
