Piastri Identifies One Of His Two 'Most Complete Weekends' In 2023

Tuesday, 12 December 2023 at 23:00

Oscar Piastri discussed one of his "most complete weekends" in the 2023 rookie season driving for McLaren.

The Australian rookie revealed the British Grand Prix was one of his two most complete races of the season despite finishing "only" in fourth place.

The 2023 British Grand Prix was the weekend that the real pace of both McLaren drivers' showed for the first time after introducing incredibly effective upgrades.

Up until that point of the season, both McLaren drivers struggled pretty much at the end of the grid. However, in the race at Silverstone, Lando Norris and Piastri qualified in P2 and P3 to finish the race in P2 and P4. Piastri told F1:

"I would say it was big… I was feeling the love that weekend definitely. I still think to be honest, it was probably my most complete weekend, or one of the two, for the year. I was very happy with it."

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The 22-year-old even had a chance to get into the second place after Verstappen's slower start, but he kept his cool and avoided unnecessary mistakes by trying to go side by side with the Dutchman.

The Aussie was on his way to finish third, but an unfortunately timed safety car hindered his progress by giving Lewis Hamilton a free pit stop, which allowed the Mercedes driver to overtake Piastri and take third place.

"Both me and Lando were performing well that weekend so I was certainly feeling the love from the crowd, from the media – not that I'd paid that much attention to the media side of things."

McLaren was kind of an underdog story during the British Grand Prix, and everybody loved and supported the Papaya team. Piastri concluded it was his first solid weekend in F1:

"But it's always nice to have people saying good things about you. That was really the first weekend where it picked up and also the first weekend where I went, [afterwards]: 'That was a solid weekend that I feel like I got the most out of myself.'"