- The Australian F1 star participated in the United States GP training
- He finished 16th after exceeding track limits.
- It could have been a lot worse after another big mistake.
A frustrated Oscar Piastri has been dropped from qualifying after the first free practice session at the United States GP, but the Australian F1 star can probably count his lucky stars: it wasn’t much worse.
It was not the Australian’s day when he went off the track at Turn 19 in sprint qualifying, leaving him eliminated and relegated to 16th on the grid.
But it was another incident that caused Piastri further concern after he came dangerously close to crashing his McLaren into a barrier after a pit lane incident went wrong.
The United States GP only allows drivers a single session to calibrate their vehicles in the Sprint format, so most drivers entered the pit lane towards the end of practice for a new set of soft tires to simulate a qualifying race.
That included Piastri, but he arrived too hot and had to retire at the last second, narrowly avoiding a major crash into the barrier separating pit lane from the main track.
A relieved Piastri reported the incident and was praised by his race engineer for avoiding a costly collision.
“We saw what happened, congratulations for avoiding the accident,” he said.
Piastri miscalculates a corner at the United States Grand Prix and exceeds the track limits, which costs him dearly on the Sprint race grid.
Piastri had a day to forget in practice, nearly crashing when pitting and going off the track to earn a penalty before the Sprint race.
Anyway, the session was a failure for the Australian, after he misjudged Turn 19 and received the penalty for going off track.
‘Obviously a disappointing start to the sprint qualifying. “The car looks like it has a lot of speed,” said McLaren CEO Zak Brown.
‘Unfortunately, Oscar lost his turn there, he was comfortably in. Tomorrow will be a bit of a long day.
‘Drivers are not totally happy with the car’s handling. That corner catches some people.
Piastri said: ‘Most of the lap was good. I made some mistakes in the last sector and in the penultimate corner I tried to go too fast.
“It’s a shame, but the good thing about sprint weekends is that tomorrow we have another chance. It feels good.”
The view from Piastri’s cockpit shows how close he came to crashing into the barrier.
This is the second time this year that Piastri has had problems with bites.
At the Belgian Grand Prix in August, the Australian almost caused a dangerous incident when he pitted from the lead on lap 31 and overshot his box.
“I really came in a little hot,” he said at the time.
‘I felt like on Friday there was a lot of grip in the pit lane and I was always under the box.
“Even on my first pit stop I probably fell a little short.
‘I had to brake a little bit, with Lewis (Hamilton) coming out, so maybe I was coming in a little slow. but the second one was clearly a bit over the top.
“It wasn’t my best moment.”
The US GP is one of six of this season’s 24 events that have been designated F1 Sprint events and Red Bull champion Max Verstappen has won all three sprint races so far this year.
He qualified third behind Ferrari duo Carlos Sainz and teammate Charles Leclerc.
‘We had a good day. “I’m happy, the car was working pretty well, very happy to be first, it’s been a while,” Verstappen said.
“It’s not easy, tackling it in one lap isn’t the easiest, but it’s fun.”
“We will do our best in the sprint, but the most points will be available on Sunday.”
