Brundle claims Oscar Piastri is 'broken' after McLaren error

Sky Sports F1 pundit Martin Brundle has described Oscar Piastri as 'broken' after the Qatar Grand Prix.

Piastri took pole for both the sprint race and the grand prix in Qatar, winning the sprint comfortably and getting away well into a handy lead in Sunday's feature race before disaster struck.

A terrible strategy call robbed Piastri of what looked like a certain win at the end of a weekend he'd dominated, depriving him of the chance to close the championship gap to team-mate Lando Norris to just nine points.

Piastri did fight his way up to second behind Max Verstappen but was visibly devastated after the race, knowing he now needs a miracle to pass both Verstappen and his team-mate Lando Norris in the standings.

Brundle: McLaren made key error

For those who missed Sunday's race, McLaren chose not to pit when the safety car came out on Lap 7 of the 57-lap race, the earliest possible moment for a two-stop strategy given the mandatory maximum of 25 laps per set of tyres imposed for the race.

The team's engineers and strategists had expected a number of other drivers to stay out with them, giving them a strong buffer of traffic back to Verstappen, only to see the whole field file into the pits behind them, essentially giving the Dutchman a free pit stop in terms of track position.

Speaking on Sky's post-race broadcast, Brundle said: “Of course they should have both come in, or they should have split the strategy. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

“They've made a key error on that and it's cost the team an important victory. I was trying to get some words out of Oscar after the race. He was broken, because he's dominated the weekend.”

Piastri himself offered a similar sentiment, saying it was 'pretty obvious' the team should have pitted both cars, adding: “Pretty gut-wrenching, to be honest. It felt like I drove probably the best weekend I’ve had this year, if not in F1, so to not have the result is painful."

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