Oscar Piastri has admitted the error that cost him a podium finish in Formula 1's Australian Grand Prix will "hurt" for a while, admitting his late race spin was the result of him pushing too hard for the conditions.
The Australian was locked in a tight lead battle with McLaren team-mate Lando Norris when the pair both ran off the track at Turn 12 with 13 laps to go amid a downpour.
While Norris managed to collect things up and keep going to dive into the pits for intermediates, Piastri spun onto the grass at Turn 13 and was left stranded.
He eventually managed to slowly reverse back on to the track and got going again before recovering to finish ninth – but well aware he had blown a golden opportunity to fight for the win.
"Clearly it will hurt for a period of time, but I'm still happy with the job I did, apart from that one lap," said Piastri.
Read: Our verdict on a chaotic Australian GP
"Those were incredibly tough conditions, and we saw a lot of people struggling today. Not that that means I should struggle. But, I think there's still plenty of positives to take [from the weekend]."
Piastri felt before the incident that his pace had been strong, but said that running wide was a consequence of overstepping things.
"I tried to push a bit too much, I guess, in those conditions," he said. "It was very difficult to judge just how slippery it's going to be from one lap to the next. And it really changed a lot.
"I could see Lando going off in front of me, but I was also already in the corner, basically. So there wasn't much I could do to slow myself down at that point.
"Then, once you are in the gravel or the grass, you obviously try to keep the car as straight as possible. And then obviously to get stuck in the grass like that was pretty unbelievable. I was sat in the car, but I've only got myself to blame for being there. It is a shame."
Temporary team orders
While Piastri's spin was the consequence of pushing too hard in his fight with Norris, the Australian's afternoon was also impacted by some mid-race team orders.
Having closed up on the back of Norris after clearing Max Verstappen's Red Bull, Piastri was told to hold position and call off the fight for a few laps.
Moments later he ran wide at Turn 6 and dropped back, before McLaren chose to unleash both drivers again.
Piastri said what McLaren did was understandable because of the difficult conditions, but he did want some clarity about why things were done the way they were.
"I think today's race and the circumstances were pretty extreme," he said. "We were approaching backmarkers, one dry line, not knowing if there's going to be rain to come.
"So I'll speak to the team to try and understand better what the thinking was. But I think it's always clear that those kinds of calls can come in either direction."
Team principal Andrea Stella had this was a temporary call because of the race circumstances at that particular point.
"During the race at some stage we had to go relatively soon through some backmarkers while the cars were close together and conditions on track were still a little tricky with intermediate tyres that were running down a bit in terms of the rubber on them, and at the same time we were receiving some updates on the weather forecast," he said.
"Going through the backmarkers and that update on the weather forecast led us to close, for a short period of time, the internal racing between our two drivers until we had clarity as to the weather predict and what this meant for how we should use the tyres and then until we had closed the matter of overtaking the backmarkers.
"Once this was completed and the weather was assessed, then we reopened the racing."
McLaren "means business"
Despite missing out on a golden opportunity to finish on the podium in front of his home crowd, Piastri said he did not want the disappointment of a single moment to cloud what had been an incredibly strong weekend for his McLaren team.
"It would be pessimistic of me to just write off the whole weekend because of one mistake," he said.
"One thing we wanted to do this year was start stronger than we've started the last two years. I think today pretty emphatically showed that we mean business."
