Oscar Piastri confirmed he knew Fernando Alonso wanted to work with him to finish ahead of George Russell during the fourth round of the season in Japan.
Even though he should have a faster car than Fernando Alonso, Oscar Piastri couldn't extract as much out of his McLaren last weekend as he usually can.
This meant that he qualified behind the Spanish matador on Aston Martin, who in turn had one of the best weekends in his more than 20-season-long career.
Following the underwhelming qualifying result, Piastri struggled to get ahead of the 42-year-old driver throughout the whole race.
Eight laps before the end of the race, he was within 1 second from the Spaniard (DRS range) but still could not overtake him. It was then that George Russell started catching up with them.
Alonso, being the old fox (as the Aston Martin team principal called him), knew his only chance to stay ahead of Russell would be to stay within one second of Piastri so the McLaren driver would have DRS on the straight.
Consequently, Russell would have trouble overtaking him on the straight. The 23-year-old confirmed after the race that he immediately understood what was happening.
"I could tell that Fernando was trying to keep me there by the way he was using his energy."
"I think with how difficult it is to follow in these cars, it's quite a good strategy to stop a quicker car coming through."
When the media asked the 42-year-old after the race whether he had done that on purpose, he took a sly dig at FIA, saying he didn't want to say because he would get disqualified.
While the strategy worked perfectly for the Spaniard, who finished ahead of the Mercedes driver in the end, Piastri unfortunately made a mistake in one of the corners and was overtaken by Russell.
"A few tough moments with George but in the end, I made a mistake and he got past. Disappointing to let that one slip right at the end, just struggled a bit in general today."
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