Ill Piastri was unsure before Baku: 'He stayed calm'

Oscar Piastri did not pick up any points in Azerbaijan, but the Australian will be long happy to have seen the finishing flag. A handsome achievement, as over the weekend he felt ragged. There was even serious doubt whether the rookie could race at all for the McLaren team over the past weekend.

Piastri was suffering from a nasty stomach upset and over the weekend he had about four sandwiches, nothing more. "He feels that he's lost weight over the last few days and just generally been under the weather", team boss Andrea Stella told the media, including GPblog, on Sunday. "We have had a couple of points during the weekend in which we needed to evaluate if it was better to have rest now to make sure that we are okay on Sunday."

Doctors did a fine job

According to Stella, the medical staff did an excellent job with Piastri. "But Oscar has always been very calm and very say, ‘okay, let's try, I get in the car, if I can't do it, I will box.’ And then has always found the resources to go through the session. But yes, a couple of points we thought, let's think that we want to be okay on Sunday, not now.” 

Piastri was unlucky that the race was through the streets of Baku: with the walls always close by, making it psychologically tough. Moreover, there was also the sprint race. "So it's definitely an issue that requires a lot of lucidity and a lot of concentration. and definitely sometimes Oscar kind of after the session said like, ‘I’m really exhausted.’ But interesting, he was like, okay, okay, in the session and then after it kind of a little bit of a drop.”