- Aussie F1 star was taking part in practice at United States GP
- Finished 16th after exceeding track limits
- Could have been a lot worse after another huge error
A frustrated Oscar Piastri has been eliminated from qualifying after the first practice session at the United States GP but the Aussie F1 star can probably count his lucky stars it wasn’t much worse.
It wasn’t the Aussie’s day as he veered off the track at turn 19 in sprint qualifying, leaving him eliminated and relegated to 16th on the grid.
But it was another incident that caused more concern for Piastri after he came perilously close to smashing his McLaren into a barrier after a pit lane incident gone wrong.
The United States GP only allows drivers a single session to calibrate their vehicles in the Sprint format so the majority of the drivers entered pit lane towards the end of practice for a fresh set of soft tyres to simulate a qualifying run.
That include Piastri, but he came in too hot and had to bail out at the last second, narrowly avoiding a major crash into the barrier separating pit lane from the main track.
A relieved Piastri reported the incident and was praised by his race engineer for avoiding a costly collision.
‘We saw what happened – well done for avoiding the accident,’ he said.
Piastri misjudges a turn at the United States Grand Prix and exceeds the track limits, costing him dearly on the grid for the Sprint race
Piastri had a day to forget in practice, almost crashing coming into pit lane and veering off the track to earn a penalty ahead of the Sprint race
The session was a write off for the Aussie anyway, after misjudging turn 19 and copping the penalty for veering off the track.
‘Obviously a disappointing start to sprint qualifying. Car looks like it’s got plenty of speed,’ McLaren chief executive Zak Brown said.
‘Unfortunately Oscar lost his lap there, he was comfortably in. Bit of a long day tomorrow.
‘Drivers aren’t totally happy with the handling of the car. That corner gets some people caught out.’
Piastri said: ‘Most of the lap was good. Made a few mistakes in the last sector and second last corner just tried to go a bit too fast.
‘A shame but the one good thing about sprint weekends is we have another shot tomorrow.It feels OK.’
Vision from Piastri’s cockpit shows how close he came to smashing into the barrier
It is the second time this year Piastri has encountered issues with pitting.
At the Belgian Grand Prix in August the Aussie nearly caused a dangerous incident when he pitted from the lead on Lap 31 and overshot his box.
‘I just went in a bit hot really’ he said at the time.
‘I felt like on Friday there was a lot of grip in the pit lane and I was kind of always undershooting the box.
‘Even my first pit stop I probably undershot it a little bit.
‘I had to brake a little bit, with Lewis [Hamilton] coming out, so maybe I was coming in a bit slow. but the second one clearly was a little bit overdone.
‘It wasn’t my finest moment.’
The United States GP is one of six of the 24 events this season that has been designated F1 Sprint events and Red Bull champion Max Verstappen has won all three sprint races so far this year.
He qualified third behind Ferrari duo Carlos Sainz and teammate Charles Leclerc.
‘We had a good day. I’m happy, the car was working quite well, very happy to be first – it’s been a while,’ Verstappen said.
‘It’s not easy, to deal with it over one lap is not the easiest but it’s fun.
‘We’ll do the best we can in the sprint but the most points are available on Sunday.’
