Oscar Piastri doesn't think McLaren F1 made a mistake by switching back to a rain wing specification on Sunday, after its new rear wing brought in for the Interlagos weekend worked very well on Friday and Saturday on the dry.
The Australian driver explains that the performance of the high downforce wing was not a problem at the start of the race, even if he lacked a little speed to overtake more easily.
“The top speed didn't seem very high, but I don't think that's our biggest problem” Piastri said. “We were obviously gaining ground in the corners with the downforce we had, but it was obviously not enough.”
“I think we need to understand a little bit better, because the first half of the race we looked very fast, and then in the second half both cars seemed to struggle a lot more.
McLaren had decided to use the rear wing specification with the highest aero downforce, which provided grip and traction despite the loss of top speed: “I'm not sure it was a limiting factor. You could say that in qualifying it helped.”
“With the extra downforce in the race, it should have helped us for most of the lap. In the first half of the race, yes, you could say it slowed us down a bit because we were stuck behind some cars. “
“But in the second half we weren't stuck behind any cars, we were just slow. So I think no matter what rear wing we had in the second half of the race, we weren't going to finish better .”
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