Piastri accepts blame for race-ending crash on ‘messy’ weekend

Oscar Piastri says he should have known better than to have misjudged the grip level on the opening lap of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on his way into the barriers at Turn 5.

Piastri completed a weekend of uncharacteristic mistakes by jumping the start and dropping to the back of the field by the first turn. In a bid to slice his way back towards the points, he locked up into Turn 5 and plowed into the wall.

The dual errors came after he crashed out of qualifying without setting a time in Q3, leaving him a season-low ninth on the grid.

The race-ending crash was committed while attempting to pass Esteban Ocon around the outside of the left-handed turn. He misjudged his braking point, perhaps as a result of Nico Hulkenberg ahead of him also braking too deep into the corner – but whereas the German just made it through, Piastri was traveling far too quickly to correct his mistake.

“I think it was just ultimately misjudging the grip level,” he said. “Probably a lot of that's from dirty air, but I know better than that, to expect the lack of grip.

“Just a misjudgment on the lights, I guess trying to anticipate it too much. A simple error, and then went into anti-stall, and it went downhill from there.

“I'm certainly not blaming it on anything else. It was two simple errors on my behalf that caused today.”

The litany of uncharacteristic mistakes should have left Piastri vulnerable to a big points swing against him, but teammate and chief title rival Lando Norris failed to capitalize, qualifying and finishing seventh to shrink his deficit by just six points, bringing it down to 25 points.

The limited damage was of limited comfort to Piastri, however, who was at a loss to explain why his otherwise clean season record became so comprehensively blotted in a single round.

“There's not been anything that different [about this weekend],” he said. “It depends how you want to look at that, but for me, if I felt like I was in a completely different head space, then it's easier to blame it on that and also a problem to rectify, but this weekend's felt like any other weekend.

“Unfortunately there's been far too many mistakes from start to finish. Every single session has been messy, so just trying to clean that up is the important thing for the future.

“I think it's rare that I have so many executional errors, so I’m very much focused on putting that behind me. I would be much more concerned if these errors were because I was trying to make up time or do things like that. I think they’ve obviously been costly errors but things that can be very, very easily rectified.”

The Australian also took heart in the belief that he was quick in Baku but was unable to demonstrate it.

“You're never going to feel amazing after a weekend like this, but ultimately I felt like the pace has still been good this weekend,” he said. “I'm just trying to bounce back from this weekend and put in the best performances that I can, and I know that if I get back to where I know I can be, then I'll be more than OK. That's what I'm going to focus my energy on.”