Piastri says difficulty repeating a good lap reflected his season

Oscar Piastri finished seventh in the United States Grand Prix and said he could manage a decent lap but found it very difficult to repeat it. He called that difficulty “the story of the weekend, and in some ways, the story of the year.”

Piastri said he could fix one area only to struggle elsewhere, making it difficult to extract performance from the MCL40. He also said he lost time catching Isack Hadjar in awkward places after Hadjar came out of the pits. Hadjar seemed to have an issue, Piastri said, and he described Hadjar’s energy deployment as “a bit all over the place.” Piastri spent the rest of the race defending from George Russell.

Piastri let reigning champion Lando Norris through in the early stages and finished more than 20 seconds behind his teammate, who also made one stop. He switched from a two-stop strategy to a one-stop and finished 52.674 seconds behind winner Kimi Antonelli. Piastri was surprised to keep Russell behind and counted that as a positive. He has now gone 15 races without a podium, since finishing third at Miami.