Oscar Piastri says he knew he had to be brave in wet to overtake the wet Land Norris and win the Belgian Grand Prix.
Norris started with the pole and led the field on a wet track as part of a rolling start. Piastri approached him from second place. With Norris struggling with wheel spin from the source in LA, Piastri went straight past Aude Rouge and Laidillon to lead the rest of his way to extend the championship lead to 16 points.
- Race Report: Piastri overtakes Norris for Belgian GP victory
- Opinion: Art of choosing when to race in the rain
“I thought if I did it (take the lead at the start), it would help quite a lot,” Piastri said. “I drove off Turn 1 well and then tried to get Audreauge as brave as possible and stayed pretty close. Then the slipstream did the rest for me.
“I generally had a good reopening. I approached the last chicane, ran out of OK from the last chicane, then had a good exit from turn 1. A move through Oak Rouge, I knew it would be my best opportunity to win the race.
“Obviously, in these conditions it’s a little more difficult than when it’s dry. I knew I had to try it. When I saw the inside of the ship it wasn’t as scary as I felt in the car.
Although Piastri had not been subjected to serious pressure since that point, Norris chose another strategy to worry about race leaders when his teammates were able to increase the pace of the hard-tyre compound.
“It was a tough race. It was a tough situation at first, and we were just trying to manage the inters first,” he said.
“I felt good in the medium at about five laps, and when I found out that the harder Rand cars wasn’t worse than the medium, I was a bit nervous considering I had nearly 25 laps to go at that point.
“We talked about it before the race. It was a fairly slow decision to load the laps we did, but there is a risk in either way. If I were in the Rand position, I would probably have done the same thing.
“If you have a safety car that often comes with these conditions, you probably need a medium and it’s not difficult. There’s a risk in both ways, but in the end you’re happy with what we did.”
Norris admitted that Piastri had won with his move in the start and despite finishing a 3.4-second drift from his teammates, he didn’t stick to some small mistakes that took about three seconds of race time.
“Oscar did just the right job,” Norris said. “There’s nothing more to say. I made a little more commitment through Aulouge and ran with the slipstream. There was nothing to complain about. He did a better job at first.
“It’s ‘shoulda, decla, come” so Oscar doesn’t deserve it. I’m sure he’s made some mistakes. If he had driven the perfect race… he wouldn’t have won today. I am very happy with the team.