BAKU (Reuters) -Formula One leader Oscar Piastri is confident he can still control his own destiny despite having to cede points to McLaren teammate and title rival Lando Norris in a controversial Italian Grand Prix swap.
The Australian is 31 points clear of the Briton going into this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku, round 17 of 24, which could secure McLaren’s second successive contructors’ title.
Piastri told reporters there had been “good discussions” about how the team went racing after the September 7 race at Monza.
He had to hand back second place to Norris after the Briton lost it through no fault of his own during a slow stop, having been assured he would not lose out by pitting after Piastri.
“We’ve had good discussions with the team…a lot of discussions, clarified a lot of things,” said the 24-year-old driver.
“We know how we’re going to go racing going forward, which is the most important thing. What’s happened is done and I’m excited to go racing here.”
Piastri, winner of seven races this year, would not provide details of the discussions.
“A lot of that is to stay for us because, ultimately, if we give out that information then we become very easy targets to pick off because everyone knows what we’re going to do,” he said.
“So that’s all very aligned with all of us but it stays in-house.”
Piastri recognised it might have been harder to hand back the place had he and Norris been fighting for a win but said he had not deserved more than third at Monza and that was his main takeaway from the weekend.
He said that should the exact same situation occur, which was “virtually impossible”, he would expect the same request to be made.
“I feel like a lot of fans are quite quick to jump on things that are deemed controversial,” added Piastri.
“So I’m not that surprised (by some of the negativity after Monza) but I do think we have enough freedom to control our own destiny in the championship.”
(Writing by Alan Baldwin in London, editing by Ed Osmond)
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