Piastri admits he was “not quite at Lando’s level” in Dutch GP

Piastri had to settle for fourth at Zandvooort

An honest Oscar Piastri admits that he wasn’t at the same level as McLaren team mate Lando Norris in the Formula 1 Dutch GP, and adds that he’s “not being consistently good enough” this season.

The Australian qualified third at Zandvoort, but lost out to George Russell at the start, and got stuck behind the Mercedes driver.

After the stops he was caught behind Charles Leclerc, and he remained in fourth place to the chequered flag, having rarely had a clear lap. He crossed the line 27.3 seconds shy of dominant winner Norris.

On the in-lap Piastri told the team that it hadn’t been “a great weekend from myself,” and having apologised thanked them for a providing a quick car.

“I think just not being consistently good enough,” he said when asked by this writer to elaborate on his honest verdict. “I think there were definitely moments of the weekend where I felt very strong and very comfortable.

“It felt like Friday was pretty strong, especially over one lap, even qualifying was looking very strong, I just didn’t find enough on the last lap of qualifying. And that made life a bit painful, and accompanied by a bad start today really kind of set the tone for the afternoon.

“So when your teammate wins by 20 seconds clearly, there’s things to work on and improve.”

Regarding his frustrating Sunday he said: “I think realistically, it started with qualifying, just not being competitive enough when it mattered. The start obviously didn’t help things. It just kind of boxed us in a little bit.

“I think the pace in clean air was quite strong. And clearly the car was quick today, just I spent about 60 of the 70 laps within a second of the car in front. So that made life pretty painful.”

Piastri believes that he’ll be on better form in the upcoming Italian GP at the revamped Monza..

“I’ll try and make sure that I’m back in the game next week,” he said. “A very different track. This track was similar to Hungary, to Spain. I think we’ve been very quick at pretty much every circuit since Miami, I would say.

“So I’m not really concerned. I think Ferrari will probably be a bit quicker. In the past, that’s where they’ve been very strong. And today they had a quicker car than I think a lot of people expected. So I’m expecting them to be a bit more in the fight.

“It’s been resurfaced, and a few kerbs have been changed quite a lot. So I think it’ll be a bit of a learning curve for everybody, especially with new tarmac, because a lot of the tarmac there was very old. But I think we should be going to every weekend with the expectation of trying to win.”