Zandvoort provided the perfect opportunity for McLaren to score their second 1-2 finish of the season after Hungary. But both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri had a poor getaway at the start. While Norris was able to recover the race lead eventually, Piastri suffered more due to his poor start and lost a podium.
Former F1 driver, Anthony Davidson believes that McLaren should have dominated the Dutch Grand Prix and secured a 1-2 finish, but losing a crucial position to George Russell at the start cost Piastri the chance to get on the podium. On the Sky Sports F1 podcast, Davidson said,
“The thing that hurt McLaren more was Oscar’s poor start… Oscar should have probably finished 2nd in that race, the speed he had, the performance that McLaren had, and Oscar losing out to George Russell in that first stint really hurt them.”
Davidson also explained how losing to Russell at the start and not being able to pass him allowed Charles Leclerc and Ferrari to undercut Piastri. Then, the Aussie had to spend the entirety of the second stint trying to overtake Leclerc, but couldn’t.
Piastri has been performing well for McLaren in only his second season in the sport. While his race pace was a cause of concern last year, the 23-year-old has improved upon the same. Although, he is still not as consistent with his race pace as Norris at all races.
Similar to Spain, Canada, and Britain, the Dutch GP was also one such race for the Aussie. However, Davidson believes that Piastri had enough of a performance advantage to challenge for the podium places despite his bad race start.
Davidson says Piastri could have hunted down Max Verstappen
Since Piastri got stuck behind Russell’s W15, he had to wait till the pitstop phase to get past him. While he overtook the Mercedes with ease, Leclerc’s Ferrari proved to be the biggest obstacle for Piastri in his quest to finish second.
“If he hadn’t lost out with Russell, I should imagine after Lando had found his way past Max, Oscar would have been pressurizing Max big time possibly done an undercut on him then continued to stretch away and McLaren probably would have had a really comfortable 1-2 in that race”, Davidson remarked.
The Mercedes simulator driver also believes that Piastri had a second chance to hunt down Verstappen in P2 if he could have gotten past Leclerc in the second stint. But being stuck in the dirty air of the Ferrari, Piastri couldn’t get past despite multiple attempts to overtake him with the help of DRS.
