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Oscar Piastri during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Photo: Race Pictures.

Piastri pinpoints the blame for crash in the Azerbaijan GP that left him with zero points

15:48, 21 Sep

Updated: 15:53, 21 Sep

bySamson Ero

Oscar Piastri has reacted after crashing out of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The McLaren driver suffered a first-lap crash at the Baku Street race.

Oscar Piastri. Race Pictures

“I'm not blaming it on anything else”

- Oscar Piastri

Piastri, who started the race in ninth place following a crash during qualifying, jumped the start before subsequently sailing into the barriers at turn five. Speaking to the media following the conclusion of the race, the Australian driver largely singled himself out for the blame. Piastri further stressed the incident was largely due to his own misjudgment.

“No, just locked up, just a misjudgment on the lines. I was trying to anticipate it too much, a simple error and then went into antistall and went downhill from there, so just a simple scenario.”

Speaking on his overall race weekend, the Australian driver, who still leads the championship, continued:“You're never going to feel amazing after a weekend like this, but ultimately, the pace has still been good this weekend, and it's rare that I have so many executional errors."

"Very much focused on putting that behind me. I would be much more concerned if these errors were because I was trying to make up time or do things like that. So they should obviously be costly errors, but things that can be very, very easily rectified.”

“I think just ultimately misjudging the grip level. Probably a lot of that's from dirty air. I know better than that to expect the lack of grip. So I'm not blaming it on anything else. It was two simple errors on my behalf that caused it all.”

Piastri on what he would have done differently in Azerbaijan

Quizzed if he would do anything different to what he had done through the weekend, Piastri added: “No, there's not been anything that different, and I think for me that's how you want to look at that, I guess. For me, you know, if I felt like I was in a completely different headspace, then it's kind of easier to blame it on that and also a problem to rectify.”

“But this weekend felt like any other weekend. Unfortunately, there have been far too many mistakes from start to finish. Every single session has been messy; just trying to clean that up is the important thing for the future."

The DNF suffered by Piastri means his lead at the top the drivers’ standings was cut , with Max Verstappen claiming victory and teammate Lando Norris finishing in seventh place.

Why Oscar Piastri will not get a penalty for Singapore.

Oscar Piastri was also handed a five-second penalty for his jump start; however, his penalty for the jump start won't be converted into a grid drop.

The Formula 1 penalty guidelines state:

"In cases where there is a single 5s penalty which a driver is unable to serve due to retirement, the stewards will not convert that into a grid penalty for a subsequent race."

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