Oscar Piastri suffered 'downhill' spiral during 'painful' Dutch GP

Oscar Piastri has charted how his Dutch Grand Prix quickly went "downhill" during a "painful" race for the McLaren driver, as he finished 32s behind winner Lando Norris.

Piastri took the restart after Max Verstappen's crash from fifth, and was on the hard tyres, but was up to third by the end of the first sector, after sweeping past Charles Leclerc and George Russell. 

However, he lost position to Russell after a slow McLaren pit-stop, and then changed early to the second new set of hard tyres, leaving him exposed later on after another pit-stop. 

It meant he fell away to sixth, behind both Russell and Leclerc, and Lewis Hamilton, with the Australian 32 seconds behind Norris, who scored a second successive grand prix win in the sister McLaren.

Explaining what happened, Piastri explained how it was quickly "pretty clear" that his strategy was wrong, but that it was not the overwhelming factor during a "mess" of a race.

"The idea was to start on the hards and then go to the end, but it became clear pretty quickly that the hards weren't actually great - but I don't think that side of things was much of an issue," Piastri told media, including RacingNews365.

"Obviously, the slow first stop was a bit painful, and the pace afterwards was painful, and there were a lot of different strategies, but I don't think ours was really the issue of our race.

"The degradation on the first set of hards felt okay, and the second set was good for about five laps, and then I completely ran out of front tyres, so there is not necessarily one thing that's going wrong, but the stint on that tyre was very tricky.

"Starting in fifth [for the restart], I was able to go around the outside, and it was a lot nicer, because I picked one space up, and then George's power unit selected reverse down to Turn 7, and I picked up one more, so that was a bonus, and then it went pretty downhill from there. 

"There's not really one clear issue. I think in the first stint, things felt reasonable; there was a bit of a tough period in the middle, but by the end of the stint, it felt pretty good, and then the second stint on the hards was okay for the first five laps, and then a mess. 

"I'm not really sure what the end was like. Obviously once the Ferraris got past as well, I went through all the marbles and picked up a load of crap on my tyres too, but unfortunately, it's not the first race where the pace just hasn't been there. So we need to understand why.

"Lando has won the race by quite a lot, so I think the car is in a good place. It's been quick the last two weekends, and I think these two tracks suit the car well; it is just that, for whatever reason, I've not been able to get the pace out of it."

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