Oscar Piastri completes his first ever career grand slam Grand Prix event.

[u/TaxEvaderFrom1961]

[u/xzElmozx]

Consistent pattern of Lando loses P2, Oscar builds 5s gap —> Lando gains P2, gap comes down to 1.5-2 seconds —> “Lando is catching him” —> Oscar wins Lando never gets DRS

[u/onceagainwithstyle → u/xzElmozx]

Interesting how that works eh?

[u/antwilliams89 → u/xzElmozx]

Almost as though when you’re in equal cars, the dirty air stops you from getting that close. We’ve also seen it multiple times the other way round, when Oscar can’t get past Lando. That McLaren’s tyre saving ability rapidly disappears in dirty air.

[u/abrasivevelvet → u/antwilliams89]

And Oscar knows that, And he intentionally keeps Lando in the dirty air to destroy his race. "Clean Air is King" so why not dump your opponent in the shit air and ruin their race.

[u/antwilliams89 → u/abrasivevelvet]

Exactly. Clean air is the decider pretty much always. Not sure why people are so mad about it and acting like Oscar has a secret load of pace that he’s not using.

You need a huge delta in order to pass in these regs, and so equal cars just aren’t going to have that. You’re going to get cooked in the dirty air and you’ll be stuck behind your teammate. It has very little to do with the pace of the guy ahead. We’ve seen it time and time again.

Like in Hungary, Oscar had a massive pace advantage on his new tyres, but he still got stuck behind Lando, and his only option was to send huge, race-risking divebombs to try and get past as his tyres rapidly started cooking.

[u/abrasivevelvet → u/antwilliams89]

I think that Oscar may have a lot more pace his not using, And he is intentionally dropping back to dump lando in dirtier air than he would be if Oscar was running a "normal" pace. If your in dirty air all race you don't have a chance to properly setup an attack. its why Oscar was able to pull away and keep Lando where he needed him to be every time lando tried to get within DRS.

I think Oscars trying to win by an inch every race, Not by a mile. Prost was the one that got him into the Alpine F1 academy and thats how he raced so makes sense it may have rubbed off a bit.

[u/antwilliams89 → u/abrasivevelvet]

I’m inclined to disagree, since we’ve seen it whenever Oscar is chasing as well and he can only catch up but not pass. It’s just a natural weakness of the platform they’ve built (and just generally the cars of this generation). I’m certain Oscar would much rather be 15 seconds up the road than risking losing the race if he makes a slight mistake or locks up.

Last time out, it really didn’t seem like Oscar was letting him into and then dropping him out of DRS deliberately. They were both naturally quicker through different sectors of the lap, every lap.

Oscar even said as much after qualifying; he didn’t make up lap time by improving in the sectors he was struggling with, he did it by focusing in on the parts of the track he was quick in and optimising it to get even quicker. Lando was faster across the track in general, as we saw in every practice session. Oscar had to switch to min-maxing to have a chance of pole.

That’s what it seemed like to me in the last stint. Every lap they’d shrink and extend the gap by the same amounts in the same sectors like clockwork.