World championship leader Oscar Piastri narrowly beaten by Lando Norris in qualifying at Spa: Although he had a bit of bad luck, he takes responsibility for his own mistake
After his mega lap and a huge lead of over six tenths of a second over teammate Lando Norris in Friday’s sprint qualifying, McLaren star Oscar Piastri was considered the favorite for pole position at Spa. But in Saturday’s qualifying, world championship leader Norris was ultimately narrowly beaten.
With his fourth pole position of the season, the Briton not only draws level with Piastri and world champion Max Verstappen, but also secures McLaren’s 68th all-McLaren front row on Saturday. This puts the traditional Woking-based racing team level with Ferrari in this statistic, with both now sharing second place – Mercedes remains at the top with 83 all-McLaren front rows.
While the team is unlikely to care much about the order of their protégés, Piastri is dissatisfied after his unexpected qualifying setback and admits that he finds the result “a bit disappointing”: “The second lap was actually really good, but I made a small mistake in turn 14 and lost a lot of time as a result. That’s frustrating.”
Piastri: “I think there was more to be had”
He takes the blame for this: “I had the feeling again that the car was very good, but the gaps are very tight. Of course, second place on the grid isn’t a bad place to start, but I think there was more to be had – and that’s always annoying. I think I did my job okay today, but I didn’t deliver when it mattered – that’s a shame.”
However, the Australian was also a little unlucky with the weather. On the first run in Q3, Norris was behind him and therefore had a slight advantage in terms of slipstream and track development, which had already proved to be a factor not to be ignored at Spa on Friday.
In the second run, championship leader Piastri had the supposedly better position, driving later than Norris – but just at the end of qualifying, the sun came out from behind the clouds, bringing the asphalt temperature up to a daily high of 40 degrees Celsius – counterproductive for lap times, as Norris also discovered, who was unable to improve on his second attempt.
“The last run just didn’t work out.”
Piastri managed to do so, but in the end it was not enough to catch his teammate by a mere 85 thousandths of a second. Piastri does not want to blame the weather, which he cannot influence, for missing out on pole position, but is instead more concerned about the mistake he made in turn 14, which he says cost him “a lot – enough” time to take first place: “I think so, yes. Because the lap was really strong up to that point.”
But that doesn’t mean much now: “Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether I could have done it – I didn’t. It’s a bit disappointing.” In principle, the pace was there: “I think both laps in Q3 had small weaknesses, but that’s how it is sometimes. It’s a bit of a shame because the car felt great again. I was actually in a good rhythm, but the last run just didn’t work out.“
And that despite the fact that, according to Piastri, the car didn’t feel ‘really’ any different from the previous day’s successful sprint qualifying: ”To be honest, it felt very similar. You just get a few more laps on the soft tires, you can explore the limits a little better, maybe you push a little further to the limit—and that probably came back to bite us today. But the feeling was very good, just as much confidence as yesterday, so it definitely wasn’t that.”
Will Piastri have the advantage if it’s dry at the start?
The Australian also confirmed that he and his team – unlike sprint winner Verstappen, for example – had not made any major changes to the setup for the race. The Dutchman, meanwhile, benefited from his second place on the grid in the sprint to overtake Piastri with the advantage of slipstream at the end of the Kemmel straight on lap one. Can he now turn the misfortune of qualifying into a virtue and benefit from his second place?
“Let’s see. If it stays dry, yes, that would be good. If it gets wet, however, there will of course be other challenges,” says Piastri: “We’ll have to wait and see what the weather does. At least I know what I’m hoping for.” If the start goes off without rain, the peculiarity of the first sector should play into the Australian’s hands, where there are effectively two pole positions due to the powerful slipstream, as one journalist put it at Saturday’s press conference…
“In dry conditions, maybe,” agreed the McLaren star: “But there have also been races where the pole sitter has stayed in front – unfortunately not this morning.” Piastri’s interim conclusion: “Spa is probably the most difficult track on the entire calendar to defend the lead from the start. But when it’s wet, pole is definitely an advantage – although it also depends on how wet it is. And whether Eau Rouge is fully wet or not also makes a huge difference.”
