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McLaren driver Oscar Piastri was clearly frustrated at the Qatar Grand Prix despite putting in one of his best performances of the season.
Oscar Piastri topped practice, Sprint qualifying, the Sprint Race and Saturday’s qualifying session at the Qatar Grand Prix, only to have to settle for second place when he took the chequered flag.
A McLaren strategy mistake on lap seven immediately put Piastri and teammate Lando Norris on the back foot, and while the Australian driver did brilliantly to recover to P2, it leaves him in a difficult position in the drivers’ championship.
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McLaren didn’t look thrilled with Piastri’s podium after the race, and the 24-year-old admitted he was ‘speechless’ when speaking to race engineer Tom Stallard on the team radio.
However, Piastri was leading from the front within McLaren during the race itself, and David Coulthard and Jolyon Palmer were both left seriously impressed by one message they heard from the nine-time race winner before his vital final stint.
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David Coulthard impressed with Oscar Piastri taking control at the Qatar Grand Prix
Over the team radio before his second mandatory tyre change, Stallard said: “Pace would need to be sub-1:24. Would you be able to do that?”
Piastri replied: “Well, I don’t see a better option at the moment.”
Palmer was commentating on Channel 4, and after hearing Piastri’s message, he said: “I like it, I like it from Oscar!”
Coulthard replied: “I love it! I love how relaxed he is as well, at calling out what the options are.”
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Palmer continued: “Given the option and you’re saying, I don’t know, but there’s no point in not trying, is there?
“You’ve got to throw caution to the wind here and get the fresher tyres on sooner. I like the thinking from Oscar there. I want to chase him, I want to chase him now.
“But as I said, there’s a subplot here where Norris, who’s now got Verstappen within DRS range, he’s going to have to clear Sainz and Antonelli in the final stint.
“He’s going to have to do some overtaking to get back to a podium.”
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David Coulthard says Oscar Piastri ‘drove like a world champion’ at the Qatar Grand Prix
Coulthard was asked after the race to analyse McLaren’s decision not to pit on lap seven in Qatar and said: “I think, obviously, full respect to McLaren and what they’ve done this year, but I think that was kind of analysis paralysis and that they didn’t want to make a decision that could benefit one or disadvantage the other.
“Probably the feeling was that stacking would have been to the detriment of Lando, but every other team just accepted that because the benefit of getting a free pit stop under the safety car and the knowledge of how difficult it is to overtake here makes it just compelling.”
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He then moved on to speaking about Piastri, and Coulthard was left thoroughly impressed: “Yeah, he drove like a world champion tonight, which he has done on many occasions earlier in the year.
“Then he had that sort of lost several weekends from Baku up until this weekend, but yeah, the frustration will be, ‘I was the quickest guy out there all weekend.’
“It was his teammate Lando who was struggling a little bit to harness [his best] lap and qualifying, keep everything together during the Grand Prix.”
Martin Brundle agrees with David Coulthard after Oscar Piastri’s Qatar masterclass
Piastri’s performance at the Lusail circuit harked back to the start of the season when Norris and Verstappen couldn’t get close to him.
It was arguably his most dominant weekend of 2025, and yet he didn’t come away with another win.
Martin Brundle said his move on Kimi Antonelli was ‘vintage’ Piastri, and showed just how confident he was on a high-speed circuit with more grip.
After the race, Brundle admitted Piastri looked broken, and with the championship fight now out of his hands after leading the standings for so long, it’s easy to see why.
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