McLaren underline Piastri excellence after 'critical' problem

McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella has praised Oscar Piastri for the way the rookie handled what could have been a race-ending brake issue at the Miami Grand Prix.

The Woking-based outfit endured a torrid weekend with neither Piastri nor Lando Norris escaping Q1 in qualifying before going on to finish 19th and 17th respectively.

But Australian Piastri was on the back foot from the start as internal gremlins threatened to end his event prematurely.

“He needed to drive the entire race with a problem on the brake-by-wire, which Oscar was excellent in being able to cope with,” Stella told media, including RacingNews365.com.

“After having locked the tyres three or four times, he kind of realised how he needed to adapt the way he was braking to the issue.”

We stay in the race

Highlighting the severity of the issue, Stella revealed "two critical factors" that led the team to believe Piastri should be retired from the race.

“The first one was that the rear brakes started to overheat," explained Stella.

"The second one was that Oscar went long in a couple of corners because he was pretty much using only the front brakes as we were trying to resolve the problem.

“For both things, we kind of found some settings and also the adaptation of the driver, which meant that we could keep the brake temperature under control and also we could have a relatively good level of consistency in braking.

“So we decided to stay in the race. We know that there weren’t many opportunities but we are here to race, we stay in the race.”