Oscar Piastri laments F1 rule after "awkward" Lewis Hamilton clash in Las Vegas

21 November 2023 , 08:15

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Oscar Piastri couldn't hide his frustration (Image: Clive Rose/Getty Images)

Oscar Piastri has played down his "awkward" clash with Lewis Hamilton and believes that a Formula 1 rule had more bearing on him letting slip of fourth place at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

McLaren hotshot Piastri collided with Mercedes star Hamilton on Turn 14, resulting in the pair each suffering a tyre puncture. That forced Piastri, 22, into the pit and he opted for a second set of hard tyres which helped him fly up the leaderboard all the way to P4 following the safety car period.

But F1 rules state that two sets of compounds must be used during a Grand Prix, meaning the Australian had to switch the medium compounds with seven laps remaining and he ended up finishing 10th. Post-race, Piastri bemoaned the rule by saying: "I was really wishing the rule of using two compounds didn't exist because I would have just gone to the end on the hard and I think we had the pace to hang on to P4. So that was a shame.

"The pace of the car was a really good surprise. I think yesterday obviously wasn't particularly representative of us, of our pace, but today was probably better than we expected. So [we] need to understand what the difference was.

"A lot of teams seem to be incredibly different from yesterday. Williams we thought would be quite quick today and, you know, weren't so yeah, a few things to look at, but it almost feels like we deserved a bit more than P10."

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Piastri, however, insisted that his clash with Hamilton did little to affect his overall finish. "It was kind of just an awkward one," the 22-year-old added. "Neither of us had really committed to the corner that much, and then we both committed at the last minute and, you know, then I was trying to back out of it, we just ended up meeting in the middle, so, I had a puncture from that.

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McLaren driver Oscar Piastri had to switch tyres on the 43rd lap (Dan Istitene - Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)

"I don't think it really hurt our race that much in all honesty. It would have been interesting to see if a one-stop could have worked, from that point. We would have been a sitting duck like [Apline driver Pierre] Gasly, pretty much. Yeah, a lot of things for a lot of people went wrong in that race and I think I was in the same boat."

The F1 season reaches its conclusion on Sunday at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, with Piastri looking to consolidate ninth place on the 2023 leaderboard. Team-mate Lando Norris has enjoyed an impressive run of form towards the end of the campaign and has his eyes on gaining six points on both Fernando Alonso of Aston Martin and Ferrari's Charles Leclerc in order to secure what would be superb a top-four finish.

Nathan Ridley