McLaren’s Oscar Piastri says he was relieved to avoid the drama that befell others in order to collect his maiden Formula 1 points at the Australian Grand Prix.
Piastri endured a tough opening rounds to his Formula 1 career with a McLaren team stymied by its outdated launch-spec package.
An electrical glitch in Bahrain hobbled Piastri’s car before a promising qualifying result in Saudi Arabia was squandered through a first lap clash with Pierre Gasly.
Piastri was eliminated in Q1 on home soil but stayed out of trouble to finish the race in eighth place.
In doing so, he emulated compatriots Mark Webber (2002) and Daniel Ricciardo (2012) in scoring his maiden points at the Australian Grand Prix.
“Definitely happy to get my first points on the board, especially at home,” said Piastri.
“To have both of us in the points and strongly into the points is good. Obviously it hasn’t been a great first few races for the team but [it’s been] largely things out of our control.
“More things out of our control went right [in Australia] I guess to get us into the points, but to get this amount of points this early in the year is a great result and obviously something we need to get points on the board.
“We’ve also got some upgrades coming in Baku and later through the year, so to be able to get some points on the board with the car we have at the moment I think is really important.”
Piastri agreed that he was “maybe” [a little bit calmer] after bagging the first points and added: “The first two races really couldn’t have gone much worse I would say for the team.
“In Bahrain we both had our issues and Saudi the contact wiping out both of us, so it was nice to be on the good end of things going wrong for other people.”
