Verstappen Rates Piastri's Performance: 'Oscar Is Doing Fantastic Job'

Thursday, 19 September 2024 at 20:00

Max Verstappen shared his opinion on Oscar Piastri after the McLaren Racing F1 driver won the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Despite perhaps not having the fastest car on the grid during the race in Azerbaijan, Oscar Piastri secured a victory for McLaren after a heroic performance.

The Australian driver has been the most consistent and best-performing driver (in terms of points collected) during the last seven Grand Prix races, scoring five podiums and two victories while not finishing worse than P4.

Fortunately for Red Bull Racing's Max Verstappen, Piastri isn't a threat to him this year in the Drivers' Championship. However, he might be dangerous if he started actively helping Lando Norris. Here is what the Dutchman said about Piastri during the FIA press conference in Singapore:

"For sure, Oscar is doing a fantastic job lately and they are very strong as a team. So it is up to us to make it difficult for them."

"But that starts with ourselves, we need to make the car more dependable. But Oscar is definitely having a good run now."

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Verstappen's expectations for the Singapore Grand Prix

In terms of what Verstappen expects from his car during this weekend at Marina Bay Street Circuit, he admitted this track is one of the least compatible with it.

"Our car generally isn't very good on bumps and kerbs, and that is what we have around here so we need to try and stabilise it."

"I don't know even where to start, I'm confident we can do a better job than last year but the competition has improved quite a bit. i'm definitely targeting Q3 put it like that."

Why would the Red Bull Racing F1 driver make a comment about targeting Q3? Last year (2023), he was knocked out of Q2 and had to start the race from P11.

One of the teams that went very fast in Singapore last year was McLaren-Norris, which crossed the finish line in P2. In comparison, Verstappen finished in P5.