Oscar Piastri said he gained useful information by following race leader Max Verstappen when rain fell during the Monaco Grand Prix.
With this year’s pre-season testing consisting of just three days’ running in Bahrain, Piastri had little prior experience of driving an F1 car in wet conditions.
When rain fell over the final 25 laps in Monaco, drivers initially had to cope with the conditions on slick tyres, before switching to intermediates as the conditions worsened. The McLaren driver finished tenth.
“I don’t think there was any touches [with the walls] but some very, very close moments, especially when we were on the slicks,” Piastri told media including RaceFans after the race.
“One time I keyed up on the radio to talk and almost put it in the wall like mid-sentence. I won’t do that next time. A few close calls.”
Piastri was lapped by Max Verstappen which gave him the opportunity to observe how the world champion handled the challenging conditions.
“Having Max right in front of me was actually quite useful in some ways because that was my first time on slicks on a rainy track in an F1 car,” said Piastri.
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“Having Max there, I obviously knew that if it was going to be anyone that’s probably going to be okay, it’s probably going to be him. So that was quite useful in some ways.”
Verstappen won the grand prix but had multiple brushes with the wall on the way. Piastri nonetheless found his example useful to follow.
“When it was raining on the slicks, understandably he was I think being very cautious, so I could keep with him quite well there. And even when we came out on inters, I could keep with him quite well.
“Once the track dried up and he got a bit more comfortable, then he was a fair bit quicker. But initially I was managing to keep behind him, which is the first time I’ve been able to say that, so it was nice.”
Verstappen said he purposefully drove well within himself when the rain started to fall. “It was just that I had a big lead and I didn’t want to risk trying to be the same pace or faster and then end up in the wall,” he explained. “You have to be a little bit more careful. It’s just not taking too much risk but at the same time, of course not driving too slowly.”
Both McLaren drivers appeared behind Verstappen during the latter stages of the race. “I had Lando [Norris] in my gearbox as well so at one point,” Verstappen continued. “I was like, well, I do need to speed up a bit.
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“It’s not a comfortable situation to be in when it’s like that to run here in the wet. But luckily after five laps I changed a few things on the steering wheel as well to just give me a bit of a better balance and that definitely helped as well.”
The Red Bull driver said it was important not to slow down too much out of caution as that made it harder to avoid mistakes.
“When you’re on a rhythm it’s better to just stay in that. I think just one time out of 16 I clipped the barrier. I thought I had a bit more margin and then I just I touched those [and thought] okay, I didn’t have the margin. But it was fine.
“It’s better to be in a rhythm and feel good than slowing down and then be a bit out of your zone, and then also your tyres get colder. It’s not what you like, they were already quite cold. So what is better I think is to stay in that because I was not over-driving it or whatever, it was just in my own zone.”
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