F1Weekly Podcast # 1091

Play Podcast: 04-21-25f1weekly1091.mp3

OSCAR PIASTRI WINS AGAIN AND NOW LEADS THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP! MAX CUTS THE CORNER AT TURN ONE AND GETS A 5 SECOND PENALTY. NORRIS RECOVERS TO TAKE P4 AND LECLERC MAKES THE PODIUM! DID ANYBODY NOTICE J-LO WOW!

Our classic Nasir Hameed segment this week: Jackie Oliver

Oscar Piastri won the race from second on the grid, beating Verstappen by 2.8sec but the decisive moment as far as Red Bull and the world champion were concerned had come within seconds of the lights going out.

Verstappen had started from pole on the short run to the first corner but Piastri made a very quick start and had eased just in front as they went through turn one. Piastri held his line and Verstappen went wide, cutting the corner at turn to maintain his lead. The world champion believed he had not been given enough room, while Piastri felt that Verstappen had not even tried to make the corner. Red Bull opted not to give the place back and the stewards investigated awarded Verstappen a five-second penalty.
When he took it during his pit stop, Piastri went into the lead from which point, in clean air he could not be caught.

His Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner, did observe that he felt the penalty had been too much. “We have this notion of let them race,” he said. “I don’t know where Max was supposed to go at that first corner. We have lost the race by 2.8 seconds so yeah it’s tough.”
Zak Brown, felt it had been the correct decision. “I definitely thought a penalty was deserved,” he said.
“Oscar was clearly up the inside. Got a better start, you need to use the racetrack, whether it’s a five-second penalty or give the position back you could go either way, but I think it was definitely appropriate. It was Oscar’s corner and at some point you have just got to concede.

Max:

“Overall, it was a very promising race. We were a bit unfortunate with the penalty, but besides that the car was strong. We had a lot of difficulties on Friday with our tyre management, so to have such a positive Saturday and Sunday meant that we really improved the car a lot. I was positively surprised to see how competitive we were on the mediums. I, of course had to try and open up a gap, but to actually pull away from the cars behind was nice.

Afterwards on the hards, it took a bit of time before I felt fully comfortable and we were getting a bit of understeer in the car. Despite everything in the race, getting P2 quite close behind Oscar was overall a positive weekend for us. Of course, on tracks with higher degradation we still have more work to do, but we did well today with the set up, the car went well and we had really good race pace. Especially after Bahrain, this was a good weekend to finish off the triple header and we just need to keep working and be as consistent as possible. It really has been a good and positive race and it is promising for the races ahead.”

Chritian Horner:

“Firstly, congrats to Oscar on the win. Arguably without that penalty we would have won today, so there are a lot of positives to take, a lot of lessons and we know where we have to improve. We believed Max was clearly ahead on the first lap and it was a very harsh decision but at that point it was best to concede, serve the penalty, get your head down and keep going. What was a great shame today was that you can see our pace was very similar to the McLaren and after the first stint on the medium we were in good shape. We pulled a gap to Oscar on the first stint and the pace was really there for Max, he was getting the most out of the car, let’s not forget on Friday McLaren had 1.2 seconds on everybody. It was our most competitive race to date this season in terms of raw pace, but it wasn’t to be. Ultimately, they were good, important points today and we are only 12 points off the lead of the Drivers’ Championship and took a few points out of Lando, so we have everything to play for. It was a huge shame for Yuki because he was up there on the grid and likely to score good points for us, he’s missed out on valuable time in the car, but there was really nothing more he could do and around here there is always the risk of an incident. Overall, we feel in a positive place heading to Miami.”

Nasir’s conversation with Jackie Oliver…