Whilst Lando Norris surprisingly secured pole position, Oscar Piastri could only manage seventh place: the Australian is highly critical of his performance
A dejected Oscar Piastri has described his qualifying session for the Spanish Grand Prix – which you can follow live here in our live ticker – as “shocking” and “chaotic”, after finishing only seventh, whilst his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris claimed pole position.
Piastri had struggled with his pace throughout the weekend on the new circuit in Madrid. Apart from the third free practice session, he failed to finish in the top six in a single practice or qualifying session in Madrid.
Having been 0.360 seconds slower than Norris in Q1 and 0.331 seconds slower in Q2, Piastri was once again in seventh place after his first run in Q3 – albeit just a wafer-thin 0.017 seconds behind the Briton.
However, on his second attempt, the Australian could only improve by 0.248 seconds, whilst Norris – despite a time loss in the final corner estimated by McLaren at three tenths – shaved a massive seven tenths off his time, catapulting himself to pole position.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1, Piastri described his second Q3 lap as “quite shocking” and offered the journalists present a deeper insight: “That was really one of those sessions where you’d love to press the reset button and start all over again,” he said.
“ It wasn’t so much a huge struggle with the car as it was just pretty chaotic. I had to abort my first lap in Q1, and that throws you a bit off your rhythm and your usual routine. On a track like this, you lose a lot of time extremely quickly because of that – that was the problem,” said the Australian.
“Even my final lap in Q3 … I’m not surprised the gap is so big. To be honest, it was pretty… rubbish. Unfortunately, that’s how it goes sometimes.”
“But I think it was a slightly better weekend than Monza. At least in the sense that I’m happier with how the car is handling. Today was simply one of those days,” he lamented.
When asked whether, given his team-mate’s success, he had believed at any point that the car was good enough for pole position, Piastri replied: “Probably not. I think with an optimal performance, we could have finished further up the field than where we were consistently running. But setting the pole-winning lap was undoubtedly an impressive achievement.”
Since the April break, Piastri has now lost 2–13 to Norris in qualifying head-to-head battles, with an average deficit of 0.123 seconds.
