Oscar Piastri admitted after Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix that McLaren “looked like idiots” after the team’s bold tyre strategy spectacularly imploded in Montreal.
What began as a daring roll of the dice for McLaren quickly descended into chaos as both Piastri and team-mate Lando Norris lined up on intermediate tyres despite a rapidly drying circuit.
It was the kind of call that could have made McLaren look visionary had the rain intensified. Instead, within two laps, both papaya cars were diving into the pits to abandon the intermediates for slicks – their race effectively wrecked before it had even settled into rhythm.
McLaren’s gamble blows up immediately
The conditions before the start were awkward and deceptive. Parts of the circuit remained damp but not wet enough to justify full intermediate tyres once the rain eased off.
Piastri explained just how close the team came to pulling off a masterstroke.
“There was definitely no standing water, but you could clearly tell where it was wet and where it was dry, and getting to the grid was not easy on slicks; getting to full throttle was pretty tough,” he said.
“Unfortunately for us, it stopped raining as the formation lap started, basically. Just one of those things where if it had rained a little bit more, we would have looked like heroes, but it didn’t, so we looked like idiots.
“So just one of those things.”
Instead of fighting near the front after starting from a promising position, Piastri found himself swallowed into the midfield traffic – the worst possible place to be in changing conditions.
And from there, the afternoon only became more painful.
Penalty, collision and frustration
As Piastri tried desperately to recover ground, his race spiralled further when he collided with Alex Albon, earning himself a 10-second penalty that ended any lingering hopes of salvaging points.
The McLaren driver immediately owned the mistake afterward, openly admitting responsibility for the clash.
“It was just so, so difficult out there,” he explained. “I felt like I was going into the corner pretty carefully, but locked the front, and that was it. It was not my finest moment.
“Apologies to Alex and Williams, because it was unnecessary damage for both of us, especially for them. So just one of those things.”
Read also: Norris defends McLaren tyre gamble: ‘There were valid reasons’For McLaren, the result marked a brutal collapse from a race weekend that had promised so much more. A front-row and top-six start turned into a pointless Sunday, with the team now facing serious questions about how an aggressive strategy call unraveled so dramatically.
In conditions where Formula 1 rewards bravery, McLaren took their shot – and got burned.
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