OSCAR PIASTRI ISSUES SCATHING CRITICISM ON LANCE STROLL AFTER CHINA GP CRASH

Lance Stroll’s claim that a “concertina effect” was to blame for him running into the back of the cars ahead in China has been blasted by Oscar Piastri, after all, “everyone else didn’t crash into each other”.

Lining up for a restart following a Safety Car for Valtteri Bottas’s powerless Stake, Stroll was behind Daniel Ricciardo who had Piastri ahead of him, the trio racing for the minor points.

Oscar Piastri wasn’t buying Lance Stroll’s excuse

But as drivers prepared for the restart, Fernando Alonso locked up which forced those behind him to brake heavily. Stroll, caught unaware, crashed into the back of Ricciardo, lifting the rear of the VCARB01, with the Aussie pushed into the back of his compatriot.

Stroll blamed the cars ahead for creating a “concertina effect”, adding: “The car in front of me (Ricciardo) just stopped from like 60 to zero, so a really stupid incident. It was one of those.”

The Aston Martin driver’s ‘one of those’ excuse is not cutting it with Piastri.

Conceding that “yes” those ahead of them had braked early, the McLaren driver told the media in Shanghai: “But everyone else didn’t crash into each other.

“I think in that kind of corner you always kind of need to expect that.”

Although the crash damaged Piastri’s diffuser, the Aussie managed to finish the Grand Prix in eighth place as he held off Lewis Hamilton in the closing laps.

Revealing the hit was “very, very hard”, he added: “I looked at the car afterwards, at my diffuser, I’m pretty sure that’s not how the engineers designed it.

“So, yeah it’s unsurprising that I lost so much pace from that point, which is a shame because I think some good points were on offer.”

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Piastri lost ‘four-tenths’ with the diffuser damage

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella revealed the damage to Piastri’s diffuser cost him roughly “four-tenths of a second” per lap.

Forced to adapt to what became a “very oversteery” car, Stella was impressed that his driver held on to finish second.

“Oscar has damage on the diffuser. He lost a significant amount of rear downforce — equivalent I would say [to] four-tenths of a second, something like that,” he said.

“When we heard the numbers, I wasn’t very optimistic that we could have held positions like Oscar has been able to do.

“So while his result obviously is less noticeable than Lando’s, I think he did a good job in trying to understand how to drive the car when he lost so much rear downforce.

“The car was very oversteery, obviously because you lose downforce on the rear axle, but he managed to make some adaptations and keep Hamilton behind, so that’s also a strong result.”

Stroll was given a 10-second penalty for causing a collision, and two penalty points on his Super Licence.

Read next: Sorry Lance Stroll, but is it really that difficult to apologise for driving into Daniel Ricciardo?

2024-04-23T09:01:51Z dg43tfdfdgfd