Regardless of what prompted the scheduling of the celebration, the optics of this is truly atrocious for the team. Surely they could have delayed for a couple of minutes until Piastri finished his interview? Or did they just forget about him? You know, the current championship leader who is driving for your team?
Oscar casually noticing the team is celebrating the WCC without him as he’s doing media pen duties is like a scene straight out of The Office.
Reading up on it a bit more, it seems like Lando also only was there by coincidence. And it indeed was just a FOM thing for show. Weird move by Liberty.
As I understand FOM gave McLaren free reigns to bring whomever they wanted to the podium and I don’t see how they couldn’t have waited longer (like they did last year) or pay fine to pull Piastri away from his commitments or do ANYTHING to make sure both drivers are on the podium.
There are so many things McLaren could’ve done to make sure Piastri was celebrating with them on the podium and they seemingly did nothing because Piastri seemed pretty oblivious to the celebrations until he saw them on the screen.
It was poor planning from McLaren to not think ahead of what to do in such a situation. I have heard people suggest that McLaren didn’t plan for these celebrations because it would be “bad luck”
Maybe they just assumed both McLarens would be on the podium? Definitely ended up looking unfortunate, especially with all the talk circulating already.