Damage from “very small” Sainz contact initially cost up to 0.5s per lap – McLaren

McLaren said the contact between Carlos Sainz Jnr and Oscar Piastri at the start of the race did enough damage to cost their driver half a second per lap.

Sainz clipped the right-hand side of Piastri’s car as they rounded Sainte Devote on the first lap. “I definitely felt the touch at turn one and at that part of the car, it’s such a sensitive part,” said Piastri.

The race was stopped for almost three-quarters of an hour due to a crash between Sergio Perez and the two Haas drivers shortly after the start. That played into McLaren’s hands, said Piastri.

“The team told me how much downforce I was losing before we tried to fix it and it was a pretty big number,” he said. “I don’t know what we managed to get it down to but obviously the length of the red flag helped us out quite a lot there.”

Despite his team’s repair job, Piastri wasn’t able to maintain the pace of his closest rivals at the end of the race.

“Being in Monaco, it’s probably the one track where having damage doesn’t hurt you as much,” he said. “It was a very, very small touch.

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“But with these cars, especially with the floor being so sensitive to the downforce it generates, it can ruin your race very easily. So I was very happy we could try and fix it.”

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said the team’s repair work halved the initial performance loss Piastri suffered from the original contact.

“As soon as the collision happened we observed the 20 points [of downforce] down, which here in Monaco is about half a second. But then, thanks to the red flag, we were in condition to make some repairs to the floor.

“The side wing of the floor was broken so we repaired it, we didn’t fix it entirely and we changed the sidepod that was broken as well. So overall the deficit was about 10 points for the entire race, which is a couple of tenths, maybe two-tenths and a half.

“That obviously made us a bit more nervous about the possibility to keep the tyres in a good situation, in a good condition, because the car was a little damaged. But Oscar managed to do that and ultimately the damage was, not influential for the final result.”

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