Oscar Piastri calls for Imola GP track change to be made after 'boring ...

Oscar Piastri felt his race at Imola was “boring” after finding it difficult to overtake on Sunday, with the narrow nature of the circuit not lending itself to easy passes.

Piastri spend his full opening stint stuck behind the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz and, while he was able to undercut him and overtake in the pit stops, he was halted from getting on the podium by the sister Ferrari of Charles Leclerc.

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Piastri had qualified on the front row on Saturday, but a three-place grid penalty for impeding Kevin Magnussen in Q1 on Saturday left him with work to do to make it onto the podium.

The toughness to overtake at Imola was made even more difficult by the McLaren driver pointing out that the sole DRS zone at the circuit was shorter than it was the last time Formula 1 visited the circuit in 2022, something which he hopes to see rectified next season.

He felt it was “boring” from his point of view inside his cockpit, but acknowledged these weekends can happen.

“Very tough,” Piastri told Sky F1 about his race.

“It was basically impossible to overtake today. I tried my best, I had like 20 laps behind Carlos trying to get past and just could never get close enough.

“We made DRS shorter this year. I hope they make it longer again, because clearly, I don’t know what the rest of the race was like, but it was pretty boring for me. So yeah, we’ll see.

“But I think that was the most we could have done today really, which is a bit of a shame, considering how much pace we’ve had this weekend – but that is how it goes sometimes.”

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Piastri pointed to his grid drop as a key reason behind why he would start the race in a “painful” place, but took solace from knowing how fast McLaren have been of late – and with upgrades having been fitted to help them challenge Red Bull, the Australian hopes to be in the fight for wins himself moving forward.

“I knew after qualifying that it was going to be pretty painful, and today definitely proved it,” he elaborated to media including PlanetF1.com after the race.

“I think there are a lot of positive things and encouragement to take from this week – and I think as a team, clearly, we’re there.

“I think personally, the last two weekends, I feel like I’ve been really strong as well.

“You know, Miami felt like a really strong weekend, here [Imola] has felt really strong, and I think that was the most we could have got out of the race.

“So for me personally, I’m very happy to feel like I’ve built a bit of good momentum in the last two weekends, which is something I’ve been trying to aim for a bit more.

“And I think as a team, we’re proving in different tracks, different conditions, which are generally conditions we’ve struggled in in the past, that we’re there in the fight for wins.”

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