Oscar Piastri pinpoints the ‘hardest part’ of his Dutch Grand Prix victory, ‘didn’t work…’

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Oscar Piastri has now moved 34 points ahead of Lando Norris after winning the Dutch Grand Prix.

His victory came after Norris was forced to retire from the race with a suspected power unit-related problem in his McLaren while running in second place.

Norris lost out on 18 points, which now puts him significantly behind heading into the second half of the season, while Piastri now has some breathing space as he exceeds 300 points.

Although his teammate’s misfortune took the pressure off Piastri, the Australian did highlight the key moment that made his race hard to manage.

Oscar Piastri says Safety Car restarts were ‘hardest part’ of Dutch Grand Prix

The Dutch GP was a race of attrition which saw three Safety Cars due to multiple incidents, one of which was Lewis Hamilton crashing out of the Grand Prix and another for Charles Leclerc after he was hit by Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

During the restarts, drivers at the front try to gain an advantage over rivals by going early after the Safety Car has peeled off into the pits.

When asked if he felt he ‘nailed’ the Safety Car restarts, Piastri said: “Not really. The first one worked very well, but then the next two, you don’t have many options left to you. The longer you leave it, especially once you get into the pit straight, everyone knows you’re going to go sooner or later.

“So, I was just trying to change it up as much as I could. Didn’t work that well on the last two, but it was just enough. That was probably the hardest part, but I think we managed it well.”

Oscar Piastri responds to Andrea Stella’s comments after Dutch Grand Prix win

It was a dominant weekend for Piastri in which he was quick in practice and fastest in qualifying, something that is becoming a trend this season, according to McLaren team principal Andrea Stella.

“It’s happened a few times this year where it started a bit slow and then gotten better as the weekend’s gone on. The difference from this year to last year is last year, those weekends that started slow, the middle was slow, and the end was slow,” said Piastri.

“It’s just been good to actually find the time as the weekend’s gone on. Is it an ideal way? Am I doing it on purpose? Not always. I’m trying to build up to things, of course, but was hoping to build up a bit quicker than I did this weekend. I got there just in the end in Q3, but I didn’t go into qualifying the most optimistic.

“So maybe a little bit slow to get there, but I felt very happy with where I was going into qualifying, not expecting the world, just trying to do my best and see what happened. And in the end that was enough, and a similar thing today. Very happy from that side of things, and I think that part is probably the ‘Oscar-like weekend’.”

Norris will need to win at least four races to close the gap to Piastri in the second half of the season, providing the Australian finishes second or lower.