Oscar Piastri move complaint made “in the heat of the moment” in Italian GP

McLaren’s Lando Norris accepted his Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix battle with Oscar Piastri, that saw him dip two wheels on the grass was “fair”.

Piastri and Norris converged on each other towards the end of the 53-lap race, with Piastri unable to keep Max Verstappen behind for fourth while Norris worked his way past Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton for fifth and set course towards his team-mate.

Norris first passed the Australian on lap 48, which was the start of a protracted nip-and-tuck battle that characterised the battery driven overtaking spectacle around Monza’s Temple of Speed.

Piastri reclaimed fourth on the following lap, with Norris having a second go at overtaking his team-mate with three laps to go into Monza’s second chicane. Piastri covered off the inside, with Norris undeterred to move into a closing gap on the left-hand side. As he ran out of room, the reigning world champion dipped two wheels on the grass, suggesting Piastri “pushed me off”.

With the benefit of hindsight and a lower heart rate, Norris quickly conceded after the race that Piastri had done nothing wrong.

“No, it was okay,” Norris explained. “I still need to review things, but I think it’s just the perception of when you’re in the car, when someone’s kind of opening the gap a bit and then kind of goes straight. You get that perception when you’re going at 200 miles an hour, so that’s all.

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

“But I think what he did was fair, so it’s just when you’re in the moment and you’re half on the grass, you realise how quickly things can end pretty badly, so just in the heat of the moment. But no, from that side it was fine and it was a good battle and a good result from a tough race.

The McLaren intra-team battle carried on into the final lap, with the two drivers getting the instruction from pitlane to ensure “clean racing”.

Norris appeared to bide his time for a perfect pass, ensuring he wouldn’t get repassed, and benefited from being behind his team-mate to keep his battery levels higher as he finally made the move stick into the Variante Ascari.

Using the slipstream, Piastri attempted to retaliate on the run to the chequered flag, but had to correct a big slide out of the final Parabolica corner as he settled for fifth, the two papaya cars crossing the finish line in formation.

“It was a good battle,” Piastri reckoned. “It was a lot of back and forth and the last lap, you never really know what to do with the energy. I think we went for different strategies with that and he got past, and I thought I’d have a chance to get back past again but ultimately I just didn’t quite get there.”

Additional reporting by Stuart Codling and Ronald Vording

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– The Motorsport.com Team