Topics: Oscar Piastri, McLaren, Lando Norris, Formula 1
Oscar Piastri's team radio after qualifying has become a talking point ahead of Sunday's main race at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, with his reaction to a P4 finish speaking volumes.
On an incident-filled Saturday afternoon in Sao Paulo, world championship leader Lando Norris finished ahead of Kimi Antonelli and Charles Leclerc in qualifying to seal pole position.
McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri, meanwhile, had to settle for fourth on the grid. The 24-year-old, who currently sits second in the Formula 1 drivers' standings with 356 points, dramatically spun into the barrier on Lap 7.
The Australian clipped a wet kerb at Interlagos and spun into the barriers on Turn 3, with Sauber's Nico Hulkenberg and Franco Colapinto of Alpine following suit and making the same mistake.
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In fact, such was the amount of debris, the session was temporarily halted after a red flag was issued.
It was an afternoon to forget for Piastri, who was in no mood to talk across the team radio after Norris sealed pole.
As seen in the footage below, the McLaren driver was 'completely silent' as Red Bull's race engineer informed him of the final result.
"Drive to the Delta on the in-lap, drive to the Delta. Delta negative and close to zero," the engineer could be heard saying over the team radio. "Just waiting for the times for the Mercedes, Oscar."
He added: "Oscar, that's P4. Lando, Antonelli, Leclerc and yourself. Pole position was 1m 09.243s. When you get here, we need to switch the car fully off, so kill the engine, wait five seconds and then switch fully off."
Piastri didn't speak a word throughout the 56-second clip.
In his own words, it was a “bizarre” qualifying session for Piastri.
“I used it a little bit the lap before,” he said. “Looking back at the lap, I think a couple of the guys ahead also used it and potentially put a bit more water where I went.
“Probably shouldn’t have been on the kerb anyway, but I think the track was in a different state to the lap before as well – and clearly I wasn’t the only one that got caught out by that.
“It was a little bit wide, but nothing major,” he added. “And I took the same line as the cars ahead, or certainly one of the cars ahead, and unfortunately, the consequences were, were a lot bigger.
“It clearly splashed up quite a lot of water when that happened. Again, I probably shouldn’t have been on the kerb, but a bit unfortunate that the consequences were so high.”
