Oscar Piastri points relief after home race 'chaos'

Piastri in Australia — Photo: © LAT Images

Australian Grand Prix

Piastri points relief after home race 'chaos'

Piastri is now off the mark in F1 after finishing eighth in Australia

Ewan Gale

Sunday 2 April 2023 13:53

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Oscar Piastri was relieved to secure his first F1 points after a "crazy" Australian Grand Prix.

The McLaren driver negotiated a record three red flag periods, a safety car and a virtual safety car to finish eighth in front of his home crowd.

Former F2 champion Piastri had started 16th at Albert Park but avoided trouble, eventually finding himself in a lengthy battle with AlphaTauri's Yuki Tsunoda over the final points-paying position.

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After initial frustration behind the Japanese driver, Piastri found his way past, before picking up extra positions when Alpine duo Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon took each other out in a dramatic final red flag standing restart.

"Chaos is how I would sum that up," Piastri told Sky Sports.

"Crazy racing, it is the first race I have been involved in with three red flags.

"A crazy race, happy to be in the points at the end of it. The pace in clean air was pretty solid, just got stuck behind Yuki for a while, but happy to get my first F1 points."

Alpine ahead

Recounting his battle with Tsunoda, Piastri added: "In the end, it was reasonably straightforward, timing my battery usage better and stuff, but it was nice to finally get past and pull a gap.

"I will look at what I could have done to get past him earlier."

McLaren was locked in battle with Alpine last season but has taken a step backwards this campaign.

Asked how the team fared compared to the French manufacturer, Piastri replied: "Esteban pulled a pretty big gap on me, it took me a while to get past Yuki.

"But at one point of the race we were somewhat similar in pace but yeah, at the moment they are a bit of a step ahead of us and where we are as a team at the moment, getting two cars into the points is a very good result for the whole team."