Oscar Piastri has revealed the most awkward F1 cooldown room atmosphere he’s experienced so far from a list that’s rapidly growing.

Piastri may only be in his second year of Formula 1, but has scored nine podiums so far from 40 starts – an almost 25 percent hit rate – and the Australian has revealed which one was the most awkward to handle.

Piastri was asked a series of quickfire questions as he gave a video interview from the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking.

Lobbed the question about which cooldown room experience has been the most uncomfortable, the Australian didn’t have to think long.

“The most awkward cooldown room…” he said.

“I mean, I’ve not been in that many, but the most awkward one was after Spa, where George [Russell] won and Lewis [Hamilton] finished second.”

The Mercedes drivers had been put on opposing strategies, with Russell swapping to a one-stop strategy as Hamilton stuck with a two-stop – the two strategies converged at the end, but Russell had just enough pace to stay ahead of Hamilton and the pursuing Piastri.

That was until hours after the race, when Russell was disqualified for his car being marginally underweight. But that disqualification was still hours away as the three drivers met in the cooldown room together before heading to the podium

“I finished third on the road, and then, of course, George got disqualified. It was tense,” Piastri mused.

“Lewis drove a great race. In a lot of circumstances, he should have won that race pretty comfortably, so I understood exactly how he was feeling at that point.

“I could very much sense that Lewis did not want to be… he wasn’t in a chatty mood, so I just watched and looked at the highlights in silence and kept to myself!”

Piastri also opened up on his friendships with other drivers on the grid, saying he’d choose to have a quiet dinner on a night out with Daniel Ricciardo, Lando Norris, Alex Albon, and Logan Sargeant as his “starting line-up”.

But the McLaren driver, who won his first Grand Prix this year with a victory in Hungary, said making genuine friends in F1 is very difficult for the drivers.

“Having relationships with your fellow colleagues on track is an interesting one, of course, because you are in a very unique situation where there are basically 20 people in the world who know what you’re experiencing and know what your life is like, basically,” he said.

“But, also, they’re your direct competition. So it’s an interesting mix. I would say I think we all have a lot of respect for each other on the grid, because we know how hard it is to get to F1.

“We know what a lot of us have given up to get there, and the sacrifices along the way. There are some people you just naturally get on better than others but, at the end of the day, you are all there to try and beat each other. So it’s a very, very interesting mix.

“I think having true friends on the grid is pretty difficult because you are trying to beat each other. I think a lot of us probably have friends with racing drivers that we’re not actually racing against anymore. It’s a fine balance.”