Oscar Piastri has started his F1 career with a bang. Piastri was the 2021 F2 champion, and Gas carried that level of skill to Formula 1 too. The Australian has had an amazing debut season with McLaren and has scored 34 points as of now, before the summer break.
His skills have recently been questioned by fellow Ferrari and ex-McLaren driver Carlos Sainz. He thinks Oscar Piastri’s lack of prior experience competing at Spa was the reason for the first corner incident, which forced both drivers to withdraw from the Belgian GP.
Carlos Sainz blames Oscar Piastri for the crash at the Belgian GP
In Friday’s qualifying, Sainz and Piastri qualified in fifth and sixth positions, respectively. Oscar surprised everyone by securing P2 in sprint qualifying on Saturday. But the race turned out to be one Oscar would want to forget.
In the first few laps of the race on Sunday, the drivers of Ferrari and McLaren collided, and Piastri was forced into the wall when attempting to pass Sainz, who had locked up while chasing Lewis Hamilton for third place. Piastri was unable to finish the opening lap, and Sainz eventually retired on lap 23 after crashing down the field due to a hole in his right sidepod.
The FIA Stewart didn’t think the same way. According to them, no driver was at fault. However, Carlos is firm on what he thinks, and in a post-race interview with Skysports, he had this to say about the incident: “I was on the attack with Lewis, I went to pass him into Turn One, I think I had the move pretty much done and suddenly I received contact on my rear right by Oscar,”
“My opinion, I’ve been racing in Spa seven or eight years and everyone who has tried that move on the very inside has always generated an incident or a crash. If you look back at past starts here, that is normally the case.”
He also went on to call the move made Oscar optimistic
Did Ferrari secure a podium finish at the Belgian GP?
Despite Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz being out of the race, they still scored a podium as Charles Leclerc crossed the line in third position. The podium surely made it a fairly good weekend for Ferrari as a team.
Charles already showed a lot of pace during the qualifying session on Friday, where he just missed the pole by eight-tenths of a second. Fortunately for him, pole sitter Max Verstappen was given a five-place grid penalty for exceeding the number of gearbox changes in a season, which resulted in him being pushed to P1.
Charles had a great start on Sunday, but the Ferrari was not a match for the unstoppable RB 19 and soon was passed by Sergio Perez, who led a good Chuck of the race before he too was overtaken. Max made his way up the grid and finished P1 with his teammate behind him, followed by Charles Leclerc.
