Damon Hill troubled by Oscar Piastri’s Interlagos radio call he never expected to hear

During their conversation about the race weekend at Interlagos, which took place on the Stay on Track Podcast, Hill and Herbert looked back on how teams handle car setups now compared to when they raced.

“By 1999, my last year, it was starting to come in where the engineers started to say, we’re going to set up the car according to what we see on the data,” Hill said.

“And I remember thinking to myself, but what do I do? I thought, well, that’s the end of that then.”

Herbert questioned: “And that was a fun part, actually, wasn’t it as well?”

Hill replied: “Yeah, it’d be great to get all the information, but the trouble is, you have Oscar Piastri in Brazil coming on the radio and going, ‘What’s the plan?’

“And you kind of think, he doesn’t even know what he wants, what do you want me to do?

“It’s not really a question that I want to hear coming from a racing driver.

“It’s not a criticism of Oscar, it’s a general observation about the sport.”

Herbert, however, offered a counterpoint to Hill’s perspective, stating: “But I get from an engineer’s point of view why they do what they do because they’re trying to almost get perfection.

“Unfortunately, perfection is not always a good thing for racing, but I still want the driver to have the driver element being more at the fore.”

Oscar Piastri’s unheard radio during Mexico City Grand Prix

Piastri is under no illusions about what is required from here: three flawless weekends, with no margin for error, if he wants to become the first Australian F1 champion since Alan Jones in 1980.

Even if he sweeps all three remaining races and the Sprint Race in Qatar, Norris can still take the title by a single point just by finishing second in each event.

Piastri’s radio silence after being told he had only managed eighth-fastest in Q3 spoke volumes about the weight he is carrying. The pressure is mounting, especially after his podium drought since Monza has coincided with both Norris and Max Verstappen finding their best form of the year.

Hill suggests that while Mark Webber can offer off-track support to Piastri, the driver will ultimately need to maximise the performance of the MCL39 entirely on his own once the race begins.