Piastri: I feel pretty crap!

McLaren inexplicably decided to keep Piastri and his teammate Lando Norris out on track when a Safety Car was deployed while Verstappen pitted, which put both Papaya cars on the back foot for the rest of the race, as they had to pit two more times.

Verstappen, on the other hand, needed to pit once after benefitting from a free stop under the Safety Car.

Facing the media after the race, Piastri said: "I haven't spoken to anyone, but I feel pretty crap, as you can imagine. I don't know what to say.

"We didn't get it right with the strategy. The pace was very strong. I didn't put a foot wrong. Just a shame," he lamented, then added: "I left it [whether to pit] in the team's hands to decide what the best strategy was.

"They had more information than I do. But, yeah..."

With McLaren's infamous Papaya Rules, there is a theory doing the rounds that the team did not pit their drivers under the Safety Car because Norris would have been at a disadvantage as he would have had to wait for his turn as his teammate gets services in a double stack.

But Piastri played that down; he said: "I'm not sure today's decision was to do with that. We potentially just got it wrong. I will speak to the team.

"I will just try like I did this weekend," he then responded when asked about his approach in Abu Dhabi. "I was more than good enough to dominate this weekend.

"If I can do the same thing in Abu Dhabi, I will be a happy man," Piastri concluded.

Norris, on the other hand, now heads to the season finale 12 points ahead of Verstappen in the 2025 Formula 1 Drivers' Championship after barely managing to pass Kimi Antonelli towards the end of the race to take fourth as the Mercedes rookie made a mistake.

However, the Championship leader was far from cheerful after another McLaren mess for the second race in a row—they were disqualified in Las Vegas for excessive plank wear.

Reflecting on his race at the Lusail International Circuit, Norris said: "It's tough. We just have to have faith in the team in making the right decision.

"It's always a gamble," he insisted. "I feel like we're the ones who took the gamble in a way. Now it's the wrong decision, and we shouldn't have done it.

"Oscar lost the win, and I lost P2. We didn't do a good job today, but we've done plenty of good jobs in other races, and we won the constructors' seven or six races ago because of that.

"Not our finest day, but that's life," Norris maintained, before being quizzed about Papaya Rules being the cause behind McLaren's blunder.

But he responded: "It's nothing to do with that. Everyone keeps thinking that, but it's got nothing to do with that. We're free to race.

"Red Bull were just as quick today as they were yesterday. They did a better job as a team and made the right call. That's it.

"We'll review things, see what we could have done better. We already know—we didn't make the right decision. You can't get them all right, you know. They do their job. I do my job. If we do that, we'll be fine," Norris concluded.

McLaren team boss Andrea Stella tried to explain how his team erred so badly and acknowledged that they let their drivers down on a day where Norris could've been crowned Champion as Piastri dropped to third in the Drivers' Standings behind race winner, Verstappen.

"It's a disappointing result overall," he said. "We had the potential to win the race with Oscar, he deserved that. He was fastest in qualifying and the sprint.

"Certainly the podium was available for Lando but we lost the victory with Oscar and we lost the podium with Lando.

"Definitely not the outcome we wanted. Something we will review with the decision we made when there was the Safety Car on Lap 7.

"As usual we will learn from racing and will get stronger for the next event, which will become more important," he insisted.

As for the decision not to pit under the Safety Car, Stella explained: "It was a decision not to pit. In fairness, we didn't expect everyone else to pit.

"Once everyone pitted, it makes that the right thing to do. When you have the lead car, you don't know what the others are going to do.

"There could have been a loss for Lando if we pitted both cars with the double stack, but, effectively, the main reason was not expecting everyone else to pit.

"It was a decision. As a matter of fact it wasn't the correct decision," he admitted while accepting Piastri's anger, adding: "We understand Oscar being extremely disappointed.

"He did everything right this weekend. He was fast, solid, and consistent. The drivers deserved to capitalize on their great performance.

"In terms of adapting the way we go racing, we just want to always keep options open for both drivers," he went on. "They are both in condition to win the championship.

"There's often been a situation where the third driver wins the championship—I remember 2007 with Kimi Raikkonen, the same in 2010 with Sebastian Vettel.

"We have to respect Oscar has his chance to win, and we will let them race," the Italian concluded.

(Quotes from Sky Sports F1)