Despite winning in Miami, Piastri sees room for improvement

Oscar Piastri believes he underperformed in the Miami Grand Prix and says he has areas to work on despite earning his third victory in a row.

The Australian became the first McLaren driver to win three grands prix in a row since Mike Hakkinen at the start of 1998, and also managed to do so for the first time in his single-seater career. Piastri was second in the Sprint largely due to the timing of a Safety Car having led most of the race, but after winning from fourth on the grid on Sunday, he said it wasn’t one of his better victories.

“I think this weekend was not my best, and a lot of that was ,” Piastri said. “The race was pretty solid, but I was pretty frustrated with my performance. Ultimately, yes, I won the race this weekend, but I think the likelihood of winning many races qualifying fourth is pretty low.

“I did a lot of things right, 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 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.”

Piastri had overtaken pole-sitter Kimi Antonelli at the start of Saturday’s Sprint, and lining up alongside the rookie again on row two on Sunday could have proven problematic, but in the end the crucial aspect of the race was how quickly Piastri cleared Max Verstappen compared to his teammate Lando Norris.

“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,” he said. “So that was nice of him.

“Obviously, for Max, leading the race, a different story. But I knew to expect that. I could tell we had a lot of pace. 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.”