Piastri explains cause of ‘nasty’ broken rib

Oscar Piastri has provided further information on how he broke his rib during the first part of the F1 season.

Over the summer break, the Australian shared a scan on social media that revealed the fracture.

In the multi-photo post, which focused on his maiden grand prix win, the McLaren driver went with the caption: “First part of the season done. First GP victory. First broken bone. Rib’s enjoying the break”. 

Piastri has now confirmed that his triumph in Budapest occurred after he sustained the injury, which he said was “just from driving” and due to a poorly-fitted race seat in his McLaren MCL38.

“Just from driving,” he explained to media including RacingNews365 before joking: “You could say we put so much downforce on the car. But no, just from driving.

“You make the seat [at] the start of the year, and sometimes you get it a little bit wrong, and some tracks don’t expose it, but I think going from Barcelona [to] Austria [to] Silverstone, they’re three pretty hardcore tracks. 

“[It was] just a bit of a pressure point, eventually my rib gave up, but it’s all good again now, and we’ve changed the seat and fixed it immediately, pretty much, so all back to normal.”

When asked the break happened, the 23-year-old replied: “The scan was the day after Silverstone, but it was definitely broken before Silverstone.

It was then queried how many races he had completed in that condition. “Three, I would say,” responded the one-time grand prix winner.

“But it [the break] was at some point around Austria. I think it was probably a bit disturbed in Barcelona and then Austria afterwards, it was pretty painful, and Silverstone was a pretty nasty few days.

“But we made some changes, and it was already getting better, even with driving, so it’s all back to normal.”

Article continues after social media post.

Injury was improving at Hungary and Belgium

The summer break has provided Piastri ample opportunity to rest and allow the fracture to heal.

Although, he also explained that the changes to his race seat allowed the injury to improve naturally at the subsequent rounds after his scan.

“Not massively,” he said when asked if it had any impact on his ability to train.

“We identified what we could change on the seat. Even with it [the rib] being broken, the pain subsided a lot once we changed a few things.

“It was getting better even with driving around Budapest and Spa-Francorchamps. It was not getting any worse, it was actually getting better, so I think we already changed what went wrong.”