Oscar Piastri admitted it was “difficult” to finish second behind McLaren teammate Lando Norris at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Piastri led Sunday’s race at multiple points, but he lost out in a final-lap showdown with Norris during which he was unable to get past.
The Australian driver, who took his maiden Formula 1 win at the Hungaroring circuit last year, said he had mixed feelings about finishing second this time around despite an entertaining battle.
“Whenever you lose a race by such a little amount, it’s obviously a bit painful, but I mean, I’m sure it was entertaining from the outside,” he told reporters.
“It was entertaining from the inside as well. So, pretty fun race, all things considered.
“When you’re on the losing side of that battle, it’s a little bit difficult. We tried our best, I think, and we got ahead of Charles [Leclerc].
“I don’t know what happened to him in the last stint, but … some things to look back on, whether we should have done something a bit different in terms of strategy, but very easy to say in hindsight.
“I knew it was going to be still incredibly tough because getting close to the car ahead is one thing, but trying to overtake is a completely different story. I knew that I was catching him a lot when I had clean air, but as soon as I got close, it was incredibly tough to stay close enough.
“There are so many corners in the middle sector that in some cases it almost feels like you do a better job in some corners, and then you pay the price at the next one because you’re even closer. That made it very tough. And then with such long corners to end the lap, it just kills any downforce you’ve got.
“Even if I had more laps, I’m not sure the result would have been any different, but I certainly tried.”
With overtaking difficult in Hungary, the two McLaren drivers raced with different strategies that saw Norris make one early stop while Piastri made two, meaning he had fresher tyres at the end.
Piastri said the team needed to try a varied strategy to beat pole sitter Charles Leclerc, whose pace faded towards the end after an overtake by George Russell for third place, with an undercut.
“I think we had to try and do something to beat Leclerc because it wasn’t obvious that we just had enough pace to blow past him and go and win that way,” Piastri said.
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“We tried something. Was it the right thing in the end? I don’t know, but it’s always much easier when you’re the car behind to take that risk.
“For Lando, there was virtually nothing to lose by trying a one-stop race. For myself, potentially there was.
“We’ll look back and see if there was anything we should have done differently. But a two-stop was always the plan before the race, so it wasn’t even really discussed that much about doing a one-stop. So, it was certainly a gamble.”
Despite the difficulty for Piastri, McLaren took their seventh one-two finish of the season and the Australian remains championship leader going into F1’s summer break by nine points.
