McLaren 'contact' FIA after Oscar Piastri Baku crash

An F1 insider has revealed the tricky process that led McLaren to contact the FIA in Baku last weekend after an uncharacteristic crash for Oscar Piastri.

The championship leader appeared unusually off form all weekend in Baku, crashing out of qualifying and Sunday's main event.

After his surprising and rather underwhelming contact with the barriers at Turn 5 on the first lap, the Aussie racer was then forced to watch on as his rivals and closest title competitors picked up points.

Shots shown during the live broadcast showed piastri quite literally watching from the sidelines at the Baku City Circuit after reportedly borrowing a phone from a marshal to watch the action up close.

Photos later shared by photographer Florent Gooden demonstrated the embarrassing walk through the city that Piastri had to later carry out, still dressed head to toe in his race suit.

Surprised locals looked on in disbelief at the sight of a real F1 driver waltzing through Baku during the grand prix, but F1 photographer Kym Illman has claimed that the whole process was rather tricky for Piastri and his team.

Piastri stranded during Azerbaijan GP

Illman's latest YouTube video unpacked McLaren's worst weekend yet in a so far stellar season, revealing the extent McLaren had to go to on Sunday to return Piastri to the media pen for questioning.

“It looked like Oscar was going to have to spend the entire race sitting in this marshal's chair. But for those of you thinking, why didn't he just walk back along the track? Surely there's a moat, which is an area that we work in between the track fence and the crowd fence. Well, there is. But at some point, he would have had to have got out of the track and walked back through the streets of Baku on his own," Illman explained.

If an F1 driver is caught up in a nasty accident, naturally they would return to the paddock in the medical car, but Illman revealed that because Piastri's crash wasn't a heavy one, the medical car wasn't sent out to retrieve him.

"So, he was stuck in that spot," he continued.

"There was no way for the team to contact him. He couldn't contact the team. So, back in the paddock, his press officer Sophie and his security guard are trying to work out how they can get him back. They contacted the FIA, but the FIA had no idea as they don't come out to this section of the track. It's the media and the marshals that know how tricky it is to get a driver back from this spot.”

Piastri did eventually return to the paddock where he faced a barrage of questions from the media that saw him admit that the incident which saw his first DNF of the campaign was his own fault.

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