‘Clean slate’: New McLaren state of play explained as Piastri burnt over awkward backflip

McLaren has deemed Oscar Piastri predominantly to blame for causing the first-corner crash in the United States Grand Prix sprint last weekend that took both him and teammate Lando Norris out of the race.

The finding means the team will no longer penalise Norris for his first-lap contact at the Singapore Grand Prix that demoted Piastri from the podium places at the preceding Singapore Grand Prix.

In Austin, Piastri got the better start of the two from third on the grid but found himself on the outside line into the uphill first turn. He chose to cut to the inside of this teammate at the apex but ended up in the path of Nico Hülkenberg, who skittled him into Norris in a pileup that instantly ended both races.

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Though McLaren came out swinging against Hülkenberg in the immediate aftermath, the team’s usual post-race debrief arrived at Piastri having played the decisive role in the high-profile collision.

“We’ve gone through it again — normally we go through every weekend regardless of what’s happened,” Piastri said. “I think there is a degree of responsibility from my side in the sprint.

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“We’re starting this weekend with a clean slate for both of us, so just going out and racing and seeing who can come out on top.

“The consequences on Lando’s side have been removed.”

Norris was handed an undisclosed penalty — believed but not confirmed to be a loss of priority exiting pit lane in Q3 — following his move in Singapore, where he shoved Piastri aside for third place after rebounding off Verstappen in a bold but clumsy move into Turn 3.

Though he wouldn’t go into detail, Piastri said it was the aggressiveness of his move in Austin that crossed the line and resulted in Norris’s punishment being cancelled.

“Yes, ultimately it was that,” he confirmed. “There were a lot of factors involved, but yes, ultimately, that’s what has been decided.”

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The expunging of Norris’s punishment for the Singapore incident is the latest in a growing line of interventions from McLaren management into the title fight in a bid to keep things fair between its two drivers.

It’s also the second round in a row that the team has changed its mind after the fact.

In Singapore the team told Piastri that Norris’s move was fair but then decided in review it was worthy of internal sanction.

In Austin McLaren believed Piastri was foremost a victim in the first-turn incident but now believes he was in the wrong.

Piastri denied that the iterative approach to McLaren’s internal driving guidelines was heaping unnecessary pressure on him and Norris.

“Not necessarily, no,” he said. “I think for us it’s pretty clear what those rules are: don’t crash into each other.

“But I think regardless of what scenario you’re in, that’s kind of how you’re expected to race as teammates, so I don’t think that adds any pressure into the scenario.”

McLAREN WALKS BACK POST-SPRINT CRITICISM

Apportioning blame to Piastri marks a long climb-down from the team’s initial position that Hülkenberg was to blame for causing the crash.

Hülkenberg had qualified a lofty fourth and was attempting to defend the place at the first turn from Fernando Alonso, who was on his inside after launching strongly from sixth.

The Spaniard’s position left the German with nowhere to go but into the side of Piastri.

“That was terrible,” McLaren CEO Zak Brown told Sky Sports during the sprint. “Neither of our drivers to blame there.

“Some amateur-hour driving by some drivers up there at the front whacked out two guys.

“Clearly Nico Hulkenberg drove into Oscar, and he had no business being where he was.”

Team principal Andrea Stella doubled down after the sprint.

“It’s surprising that some drivers with a lot of experience don’t act with just more prudence,” he told Sky Sports.

“Just more prudence — go through the first corner, make sure you don’t damage competitors and then carry on.”

Their analysis surprised most observers, who saw Hülkenberg as blameless in a classic Austin first-turn pileup that even the stewards deemed unworthy of investigation.

But speaking after the weekend, Sauber principal Jonathan Wheatley revealed Brown had almost immediately come to the same conclusion as the rest of the paddock.

“Zak sent me an apology really quickly afterwards,” Wheatley said, per Autosport. “He apologised personally to Nico.

“This is a passionate sport. I love the passion. You’re fighting for a world championship, and two cars get taken out in the first corner.

“It’s easy to think that it’s somebody else’s fault sometimes and you react with passion. I think he probably did that to Sky TV — the heat of the moment and the emotion.

“But I’ve known Zak a really long time. He’s a racer. We’re all racers, and we sorted it out afterwards.”

PIASTRI HINTS AT MINOR CAR PROBLEMS IN AUSTIN

While the first-lap crash was an obvious low point in Piastri’s weekend, the round overall offered him little more.

With a stubborn 0.3-second deficit to Norris, he qualified sixth on the grid and finished an anonymous fifth, allowing both his teammate, who finished second, and Verstappen, who dominated the race, to close their deficits to his title lead.

Fifth was Piastri’s lowest finish of the season behind only his ninth at the Australian Grand Prix after spinning off the road in the wet. Only that race and his failure to finish in Azerbaijan rank as worse weekends.

It was such an out-of-sorts performance that McLaren said after the race that it would investigate whether Piastri’s car had any hidden problems hampering his speed.

Piastri suggested that investigation found some discrepancies, though he denied they would have revolutionised his weekend.

“I think there were some things that were maybe not as good as they could have been, but there was nothing drastically wrong with the car,” he said.

“I think there were a few things in terms of how the weekend played out and how the race panned out that were different to our expectations from a few different angles, but while the car maybe wasn’t ideal, if we could do the weekend again, we’d probably do a few things a little bit differently but we wouldn’t be changing anything major.”

Instead he said his poor weekend was down to the particular demands of the Circuit of the Americas, which has been a bogey track for the Australian throughout his Formula 1 career, and that he expected to rediscover his usual speed this weekend in Mexico City.

“I think it’s very COTA-specific,” he said. “It was just a messy weekend with everything that went, so there’s an element of that hampering things.

“But I think the analysis we’ve done has highlighted that there were a lot of things specific to Austin, so I’m not really concerned that those problems will still persist. Obviously I’m hoping that this weekend is a bit better.”

PIASTRI DENIES VERSTAPPEN PRESSURE

McLaren’s scoreless sprint contributed to the latest chapter of Verstappen’s herculean championship comeback, with the Dutchman cutting his deficit by 23 points over the Austin weekend.

Verstappen is now just 40 points behind Piastri with five rounds remaining, including two more sprints.

The reigning champion has been the sport’s form man since the mid-season break. He’s won three of five grands prix and scored 119 points from a maximum of 133 points.

The run of results has seen him slash his season-high deficit of 104 points by 64 points in just four rounds. If he were to continue on that same trajectory, he would take the title lead at the penultimate round in Qatar.

Norris has also shrunk his deficit in the last four rounds, from 34 points after his retirement from the Dutch Grand Prix to just 14 points after Austin.

Piastri has led the title standings for 15 rounds, dating back to the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, but denied that Verstappen’s rapid closing of the gap was unsettling him and the team.

“It’s not really something I think about, no,” he said. “I think he’s been very consistent in the last few weekends and been strong as well, there’s no denying that, but for me there’s no benefit in worrying about that or focusing on that.

“The thing that’s going to help me win this championship is trying to get the most out of myself, the most out of the car, the most out of the team around me, and worrying about anyone else on the grid is not focusing on that.

“For me the focus has always been on tyring to go as fast as I can and getting the most out of every weekend, which in some of the weekends we have and some of them we definitely haven’t.

“I think if I do a good enough job of getting on top of that every weekend, it doesn’t really matter what the picture looks like.

“He’s there, he’s in the fight, but ultimately that doesn’t change how I’m going to approach my racing.”

Red Bull Racing’s turnaround means McLaren is no longer sure of the form guide approaching the final five rounds, even if the team thinks the competition between the two cars would have been closer in Austin had Charles Leclerc not jumped Norris for second off the line, compromising the Briton’s race.

Despite the changing momentum, Piastri said he’d prefer to be defending his title lead than chasing a leader in the closing stages of the campaign.

“Everyone likes a good underdog story, and trying to come back is sometimes a bit easier, but I’d rather have the championship lead than be in any other spot,” he said.

“I’ve always said I enjoy that because it means you’re doing something right, and I think through the course of the season we have done a lot of things right, and there are some things we can still do even better.

“I think the form card and where we think we will be strong, and where we thought others would be strong, has not always lined up perfectly, which has often been the case in this generation of cars, but I think clearly over the last few race weekends Red Bull and Max have certainly found consistency.

“I’m sure they’re going to be a threat again this weekend, and we’ll try our best to get the most out of our car and see where we end up.”