Oscar Piastri has apologised to Alex Albon for “not trying to overtake” the Williams but still ending his race in the Canadian GP.
After pitting at the end of the first lap to get off the intermediate tyres, Piastri clattered into the side of Albon’s car at the hairpin after 11 laps, forcing the Thai into retirement.
For this, he received a 10-second time penalty as he came home to finish in 11th place as the first car two laps down on winner Kimi Antonelli.
Reacting, Piastri explained that the level of grip he felt was “like nothing I’ve driven before” due to the cold air temperatures and nature of the circuit, which makes it hard for drivers to capture and retain heat in their tyres.
“I thought it was going to be a bit tricky, but possible,” Piastri explained when asked by media, including ApexF1, if he believed points were on the cards following his change to slicks.
“But it was just the level of grip out there was like nothing I’ve driven before, and just caught myself out.
“I’m obviously very sorry for Williams and Alex because I wasn’t really trying to overtake him, I just locked up, and that was it, so it is one of those things.”
As for Albon, the Piastri smash ended a painful weekend in which the Thai missed most of Friday’s running due to the groundhog strike and then only completed 11 laps before the race-ending incident.
“All the cars in front of us were quicker than the midfield, so we had a tough start, we were surrounded by intermediate tyres so were held up for the first few laps,” he said.
“We had a bit of an issue at the start, and anyway, we got through eventually, and then we were chipping away well against the cars ahead, and it got to a point where we were overtaking them one-by-one.
“We were just about to overtake Pierre [Gasly, who finished eighth] and then it was Franco [Colapinto] and Liam [Lawson, who took sixth and seventh, respectively] ahead at that point.
“But unfortunately, I think Oscae just tried to kind of follow me through with Ollie [Bearman] and just misjudged it.”
