Oscar Piastri delivered one of his finest Formula 1 performances to date at the 2025 Austrian GP, finishing second behind teammate Lando Norris in a thrilling, intra-team duel at the Red Bull Ring. Although narrowly missing out on the win, the Australian left Austria with his head held high after a spirited and strategic contest at the front.
The race began with immediate fireworks as Piastri made a decisive move on Charles Leclerc into Turn 1, crucially slotting in behind pole-sitter Norris.
“Yeah. It made a big difference. It meant I could stay in DRS from the start, and DRS is very powerful here,” Piastri said after the race. “So that certainly helped in the battle at the start. That was an important moment of the race, and then it pretty quickly became clear that it was just going to be a fight between us two. That was a key moment.”
The McLaren teammate fight
And what a fight it was. For the first 20 laps, the McLaren duo traded blows, swapping the lead multiple times, pushing each other to the edge, both literally and metaphorically.
“Intense. I hope it was good watching because it was pretty hard work from the car,” Piastri reflected. “So yeah, I tried my absolute best and probably could have done a better job when I just got ahead momentarily, but yep, it was a good battle. A bit on the edge at times and probably pushed the limits a bit far. But yeah, it was a good race. You know, that’s what we’re here to do, try and race each other and then try and fight for wins, and that’s what we did today.”
The first strategic gamble of the race came with pit stops. Norris pitted first on Lap 21, while Piastri stayed out four laps longer, a move that ultimately defined the Austrian GP outcome.
“I knew that I was always going to be pitting second in that scenario,” he explained. “For me, it felt like if I couldn’t stay within DRS, then getting back inside one second was going to be very, very tough. So, I kind of wanted to go a bit different and give myself some fresher tyres and hopefully be able to use them at the end of the stint. It didn’t really pan out that way, unfortunately, but that was the thinking at least. We’ll go back and look and see whether that was the right thing to do.”
Coming into the second phase of the race
With both drivers back on hard tyres, Piastri chased Norris in the second stint, clawing back a gap that had grown to over six seconds. A second round of stops in the final quarter of the race gave both drivers a shot on mediums, and the chase resumed. But despite closing within two seconds of Norris, Piastri couldn’t quite bridge the final gap.
“After the first stop, maybe we didn’t do the right thing giving Lando some breathing room, but the first 20 laps were pretty intense. So, it was a good battle,” he acknowledged.
There was one particularly hairy moment in Turn 4 during the early fight, which prompted a radio message from the team labelling it “too marginal.” Piastri admitted as much after the race.
“Yeah. I mean, I thought it was a fair comment. Locking up and missing the back of your teammate by not a lot is certainly pushing the boundaries,” he said. “Even if I hadn’t been told anything, I didn’t think it was a wise decision to try that one again. So, yeah, a fair comment and nothing more than that.”
A gamble with strategy
Asked whether the team should have stepped in more aggressively on strategy, Piastri offered a balanced view:
“I don’t know yet. We’ll go back and look through it. Like I said before, I think I was always going to lose time by pitting second. I had past experience of being just stuck outside DRS, and that was a pretty painful place to be in the past. So, I didn’t really want to be there again. In the moment, I thought that giving myself a bit more work to do but with better tyres was going to be an interesting option. With hindsight, yeah, maybe you can say it wasn’t the right call, but there’s a lot of things you can say in hindsight.”
The weekend hadn’t started on a high note for the McLaren driver, with a yellow flag in qualifying preventing a potential front-row start. Still, Piastri remained confident in the car and in his ability to fight at the front atcthe Austrian GP.
The Austrian GP summarised
“Yeah, I mean, I thought it was possible,” he said when asked if he expected to be that competitive. “I think qualifying yesterday was unfortunate with the yellow flag, and then I felt like the pace this weekend has been good. So, I think once I could stay in the DRS, I felt pretty good. Afterwards, once I dropped out after the first stop, it was tough to make the progress to get back. But yeah, some things to go over, see if we could have done anything better.”
Despite finishing second at the Austrian GP, there was a clear sense that Piastri relished the challenge. Reflecting on the wheel-to-wheel duel with Norris, he offered insight into their growing on-track rivalry.
“I mean, again, there have been a few battles in the past, not just last week, but last year and the year before. So, I think we both knew what to expect,” Piastri said. “It was a tough battle. It was close at some points, probably pushing the limits a bit much from my side once or twice. But we’re fighting for race wins in Formula 1. It’s going to be pretty tough work and pretty hard. I thought it was an entertaining race.”
What about Silverstone?
Looking ahead to Silverstone next weekend, Piastri remains cautiously optimistic.
“I hope so, but you never know. Canada, we kind of thought we’d be good there, and we weren’t. Here, we expected to be good, but probably not as good as we have been,” he said. “I think we should be confident that we’ll be decent, I think that’s fair to say. But how quick we are, we’ll find out next week.”
And while he may not be the fan-favourite heading into Norris’s home race, the Australian knows he still has supporters in the stands.
“A couple of years ago they were chanting my name in the crowd, so that was unexpected. I’m not sure I’ll quite get that again, which is fair enough,” Piastri joked. “I feel like the fans in general this year have been a bit nicer to us. We didn’t even have Max Verstappen fans booing us today, so that was a nice change. They’ve always been very accepting of me. Obviously, I race for a British team, and I think they’re big fans of everything papaya and that includes both of us. I’m expecting there to be a lot more Lando fans than me fans, but that’s fair. It’s his home race as well, so I think it’ll be fine.”
