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Oscar Piastri has candidly admitted that McLaren were left "looking like idiots" after a pre-race tyre call at the Canadian Grand Prix spectacularly misfired at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
Light rain in the build-up to the race prompted McLaren, Audi, Cadillac and Williams' Carlos Sainz to opt for Pirelli's green-banded intermediate tyre at the start, while the rest of the field lined up on either the soft or medium compound. It was a decision rooted in logic — but one that the weather would cruelly punish.
As the cars were prepared on the grid and the national anthem played out, the rain ceased. By the time the lights went out, those on dry-weather rubber had an immediate and decisive advantage. It was a situation Piastri had actually flagged as a concern heading into the weekend — warning of a "large element of the unknown" around Pirelli's intermediate compounds in unpredictable conditions.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after the race, Piastri explained the reasoning behind the call with characteristic honesty: "It was raining, and between the anthem and getting in the car, it was pretty wet on the ground. There was definitely no standing water, but you could clearly tell where it was wet and where it was dry, and getting to the grid was not easy on slicks; getting to full throttle was pretty tough."
"Unfortunately for us, it stopped raining as the formation lap started, basically. Just one of those things where if it had rained a little bit more, we would have looked like heroes, but it didn't, so we looked like idiots. So just one of those things."
The decision was arguably defensible in the moment — and Lando Norris also defended the call, insisting there were valid reasons behind it despite his own difficult race — but the outcome left Piastri immediately on the back foot.
Finding himself badly compromised on the wrong rubber, Piastri pitted for medium tyres at the end of the very first racing lap. The early stop dropped him deep into the pack, and as he fought to claw back positions, the race took a further turn for the worse.
Attempting a move at the hairpin, Piastri locked his front tyres and made contact with Williams' Alex Albon. The damage inflicted on Albon's car was severe enough to force him to retire, while Piastri was compelled to pit again for a replacement front wing — a second stop that further ruined his race strategy.
Adding to the misery, the Australian was handed a 10-second time penalty for causing the collision, which ultimately relegated him to 11th place at the chequered flag and outside the points entirely.
Piastri was unsparing in his self-assessment when addressing the incident: "It was just so, so difficult out there. I felt like I was going into the corner pretty carefully, but locked the front, and that was it. It was not my finest moment."
He also issued a direct apology to the affected party: "Apologies to Alex and Williams, because it was unnecessary damage for both of us, especially for them. So just one of those things."
It was, by any measure, a race to forget for Piastri — a combination of circumstances and errors that stripped McLaren of any realistic points return from what had started as a genuinely competitive weekend.
He’s a software engineer with a deep passion for Formula 1 and motorsport. He co-founded Formula Live Pulse to make live telemetry and race insights accessible, visual, and easy to follow.