Oscar Piastri (McLaren) after the collision and gearbox failure: “I was absolutely livid!”

What a bitter end to the race for Oscar Piastri! Everything really went against the McLaren driver this weekend: in qualifying, he was held up by Lewis Hamilton on his fast lap. In the race, he was hit by Carlos Sainz, who was being lapped – and then his gearbox failed as well. The Hungarian Grand Prix was over for the Australian after 56 laps.

And yet it had all started so well! Piastri had started the race in third place, with his grid position directly behind his team-mate Lando Norris on pole. He’d qualified in P5, but moved up the order due to penalties for Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Antonelli. Immediately after the start, he overtook Norris and Charles Leclerc (2nd/Ferrari) and suddenly found himself in the lead!

Piastri after the race: “The start was good, the first lap was very good. After that, things went rather downhill. I felt I’d done everything right. I think the first stint on the medium tyres was okay, but on the hard tyres it didn’t go at all. The fact that I led half the race today, even though it was so difficult, is at least a small positive.”

The problem was driving alongside him on the track: Carlos Sainz in the Williams was being lapped – and the Spaniard collided with Piastri on lap 39! Sainz received a 5-second penalty – but Piastri lost his lead in the process. The Aussie had pitted early, then collided with Sainz, meaning Norris came out ahead of Piastri when he pitted later.

Piastri was resigned: “It was more down to the fact that I was rammed by a lapped car. I think my pit stop timing was fine. We wanted to cover Hamilton, which was completely normal. If I hadn’t been rammed, I’d still have been ahead of Lando. So from that point of view, everything was fine. At the time, I was incredibly annoyed. Actually, ‘annoyed’ isn’t the word I’d use, but there were a whole host of others I would have used.” He’d rather not say those out loud, though.

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Piastri: “When Lando came out ahead of me, I knew I didn’t have the pace to challenge him. So I knew my chances of winning were gone from that point on. At that moment, I was absolutely furious that I’d lost the lead in the race, but that wasn’t the team’s fault.”

And then his gearbox failed as well. It was all over on lap 56 of 70. Piastri: “As for the gearbox: I don’t know what went wrong, but I lost all the gears.”