Piastri shares key to battling Verstappen: 'And I was able to do that'

After the start, Piastri got up into second place thanks to the battle between Verstappen and his teammate, Lando Norris.

After chasing the Red Bull driver for laps, he managed to overtake him on Lap 14. Eventually, he crossed the finish line nearly 40 seconds ahead of Verstappen.

Starting from P4, he first had to get past Kimi Antonelli as well. "To be honest with you, Kimi was very nice to me and didn’t make life very tough, which is nice when you race against people who identify when someone’s quicker and don’t make the race more difficult for both of us. So that was nice of him," he began.

About the battle with Verstappen, he continued: "Obviously, for Max, leading the race, a different story. But I knew to expect that. I could tell we had a lot of pace. Like I said, it was a matter of just biding my time, waiting for a moment, or forcing him into a moment. That’s what I was able to do. Once I got past, I knew I had to try and build a gap while Lando was behind him. That got me the win."

The Australian still sees there is plenty to improve. "The race today was pretty solid, but yesterday I was pretty frustrated with my performance. Ultimately, yes, I won the race this weekend, but I think the likelihood of winning many races [after] qualifying fourth is pretty low," he explained.

"I did a lot of things right today, but there was definitely some good fortune there as well, and a very quick car. I don’t want to rely on that every single Sunday. Clearly, this is the exception to the pace we’ve had this year. Yes, we’ve always had a strong car, but the pace we had today from lap one it felt like was unexpected, even for us. I’ll definitely take the performance and we’ll try and work out how to do that every weekend, but there’s still definitely things to work on from a personal side and from a team point of view," he concluded.