Andrea Stella has discussed the reasons why Oscar Piastri struggled throughout the Brazilian Grand Prix, and was way behind his teammate Lando Norris.

Across the Brazilian Grand Prix, Piastri was unable to best his teammate and championship rival Norris.

McLaren team principal Stella explained that several reasons have contributed to the Australian’s struggles at Interlagos.

Andrea Stella on the pit wall. Photo: Race Pictures

Speaking to F1TV after the Sprint, Stella revealed how Piastri struggled to adapt to the wet conditions in Brazil.

He said: “A missed opportunity with Oscar, conditions are tricky. You put the wheel in a curb, and that's completely unforgiving; there is no way to control the car.

“It happened to 3 drivers in the same lap at the same point, so it's just unfortunate.

“But the most reassuring input thus far is that Oscar has been fast.”

However, across the whole weekend, Piastri was not fast enough to beat his teammate, Lando Norris.

Qualifying struggles

Piastri was outqualified by Norris in all qualifying segments, including sprint and regular sessions, at Interlagos.

The Australian was 0.247s down on average across the six phases.

Following qualifying, Stella discussed Piastri’s struggles with the technique required to drive fast.

He said: “Some of the techniques required to drive the car fast they resemble a bit the techniques that were required in Austin and Mexico.

“Oscar is sort of learning this technique, embedding this technique, but it may take a bit more time to fully exploit them in a natural way.

“Especially when, in conditions like today, you have in addition the fact that at every corner you don't know exactly how much grip you're going to find because of the wind, and this caught up even Lando in the first attempt in Q3.”

Lando Norris after his Brazil GP win. Photo: Race Pictures

Norris with the advantage

The Italian revealed that he believes the recent track conditions have suited Norris more than they have Piastri.

He added: “I think for Lando in this regime of low grip, it's just a little more natural to do the things that are normal for him to do and actually produce some lap time.

“For some reason, in the last three events we have had just low-grip conditions. You just have to kind of get the car to do what you want while the car is sliding.

“For Oscar himself, this is a little bit of a learning process, but we know that Oscar learns at the speed of light, and I'm expecting that tomorrow we will have a very strong race by Oscar.”

Read also

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