Piastri had "some good fortune" and a very quick car in Miami
Despite his latest Grand Prix victory, McLaren driver Oscar Piastri has conceded that the Miami weekend was not his best, but he had "some good fortune" and "a very quick car."
McLaren struggled to beat their rivals over a single qualifying lap, but their MCL39 came alive in race trim, showing truly dominant performance.
Lando Norris got a great start on Sunday and was challenging Verstappen into the first couple of corners, but the Dutchman defended his lead hard, and the Briton was forced to run wide at Turn 2, losing four places and dropping back to sixth.
However, he managed to quickly regain the places he lost at the start, albeit he needed to fight hard against Verstappen, who was eager to hold onto his position.
By the time he picked off Verstappen, Oscar Piastri had built a huge gap and was imperious. Although Norris was constantly closing the gap to his team-mate in the remainder of the race, Piastri’s lead proved too big an advantage to overhaul.
Speaking of his race, Piastri insisted: "It's a great feeling to have won the race today, one I really wanted to win! Clearly the car was unbelievable today and we were able to use that pace advantage.
"That’s down to everyone here trackside and the whole team at the factory putting in an incredible amount of hard work to get us to where we are now. As always, there’s lots of learnings to take away from the weekend but I’m very, very happy to be leaving Miami on top.”
Asked about his fight with Verstappen, Piastri conceded that while "Kimi Antonelli was very nice to me," his battle with the reigning champion turned out to be a very different one.
"I mean, 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. 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," Piastri said.
Asked to reflect on the Miami Grand Prix weekend as a whole, Piastri said that while he was frustrated with his qualifying performance, he was much happier during the race.
"I think this weekend was not my best, and a lot of that was yesterday. 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.
"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.
Pushed on to reveal why McLaren's MCL39 was so dominant in Miami, Piastri refused to give a clear answer, but he suggested that tyre management might have played a big role in how the pecking order developed over the weekend in Florida.
"Honestly, I don’t know. In qualifying we were not the quickest in the high-speed corners. I think generally in the low-speed corners is where we seemed quite good this weekend. In the race, all the corners become even slower, and looking after the tyres becomes more important.
"That’s probably been a strength of ours so far this year. This has been the first very hot race we’ve had in terms of track temperature. Saudi was hot, but the track temperature today was the highest we’ve had all year. I think that helped our pace"
