Lewis Hamilton got past. Then, on the run down to the next corner, the second he had just built simply vanished.
That was Oscar Piastri’s account of his mid-race fight with the Ferrari at the 2026 Italian Grand Prix, the race that was ultimately dominated by Kimi Antonelli’s charge from 19th on the grid to a home victory in front of the tifosi.
Speaking to RacingNews365, Piastri walked through what he had seen from the McLaren cockpit.
“I was kind of slowly building a gap on Lewis, and then he spent all his energy getting past me, and then kind of kept using it to try and break free,” he said.
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“And he actually got, like, a second ahead, and he lost it all in one straight.”
“So it’s still quite bizarre.”
The Australian ended the race in fifth, 19.253 seconds behind Antonelli and one spot behind teammate Lando Norris, who beat him to fourth in a late intra-McLaren scrap. Hamilton crossed the line sixth as the leading Ferrari.
One straight, one second gone
Formula 1’s overhauled power-unit rules, in force this season, lean far more heavily on the battery than the previous formula. A driver who dumps energy to force a move can end up defenceless a corner later, with nothing left to hold the position.
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Piastri, in the same RacingNews365 conversation, put the trade-off plainly.
“It’s difficult. Like, if you use any extra energy, you’re going to pay for it somewhere.”
He also conceded that fighting through those trade-offs had, in the end, made the afternoon more entertaining than he expected.
“Did I enjoy it more than I thought? Yes. Was I stuck in a lot of battles that I just wanted to go and have them pull me further into the race? Yes.”
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“Probably better than a race where nothing happens, but definitely difficult in the cockpit to know exactly what to do.”
A “devastating” day for Ferrari
Hamilton called his own race devastating, pointing to a tyre call that did not work and to a Ferrari that could not live with the Mercedes-powered cars around it.
“A bit devastating. Tough one to swallow. Lost a lot of points and ultimately couldn’t keep a Mercedes engine behind. They were just out and out quicker,” he said.
“I think we probably chose the wrong tyre. Whether that really would have made much difference, maybe we would have been able to hold onto them a bit longer but they just kept flying past us.”
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Antonelli’s win extended his championship lead to 66 points. F1 now moves straight on to Madrid for the Spanish Grand Prix over the weekend of 11-13 September.
