Piastri makes 'biggest problem' claim after Las Vegas penalty

Oscar Piastri has revealed that his five-second time penalty was not his "biggest problem" during the Las Vegas Grand Prix. 

The McLaren driver was penalised at the start of the race for being outside of his grid slot, something which looked marginal on camera. 

He served the penalty at his first pit-stop which left him with significant ground to make up, resulting in a distant seventh being achieved. 

His penalty has hurt McLaren in the F1 constructors' title fight, as Ferrari reduced the Woking-based team's lead to just 24 points.

When asked for his thoughts on the five-second time penalty by select media including RacingNews365, Piastri answered: "I've not seen it. 

"I didn't feel like I did anything different or overshot it. But I mean, clearly I must have been a bit out. 

"It made a little bit of an impact at the start after the first pit-stop, but that was nowhere near the biggest problem."

Piastri's major problem.

Piastri's biggest issue during the Las Vegas GP was the amount of tyre graining he experienced, which was significantly more than expected. 

Ferrari also suffered from heavy tyre graining, whilst Mercedes did not experience any tyre graining or any real tyre degradation, as revealed by Toto Wolff. 

The entire weekend at the Las Vegas Strip Circuit was difficult for the Australian driver, with McLaren at least understanding why qualifying was so tough.

"Pretty poor [weekend]," conceded Piastri. "I think qualifying, we've got some ideas why it didn't really come to us in Q3. 

"But the race, I think was more difficult than we expected. Especially on my side, it was a much, much more difficult race with the tyres than I expected going in.

"We knew it would be tough with graining, but the graining was a lot worse than I feared. That part was quite unexpected, so I think we need to understand why."