Oscar Piastri says the Qatar Grand Prix weekend has clicked for him so far after taking pole position for the sprint race, with Lando Norris in third and Max Verstappen just sixth.
Norris can become world champion this weekend as he has a 24-point lead over his two title rivals, but it was Piastri who topped a qualifying session for the first time since the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August. The Australian says the key to his result was that he made a good start in FP1 and secured sprint pole just 0.032 seconds ahead of George Russell.
- Piastri beats Russell and takes the sprint pole in Qatar
“It was a good day, which is nice for a change,” Piastri said. “Just a day where we clicked from the start and the sprint qualifying session went really well. Quite a big moment in my lap, but in the end it was just enough. Thanks to the team, a great car and we’ve looked really good so far this weekend, so I’m quite happy with that.”
“I think if you plug it in there will be a 1m19s in it, so we’ll see what we can do. But at the moment I’m just happy with the result. Obviously a few things to try and clean up, but it’s nice to be able to say that when you start on pole. So I’m looking forward to tomorrow. Obviously it’s only Sprint pole and for a few points, but I’ll take what I can get.”
Piastri says it is difficult to know if his form on Saturday can translate into a similar situation for the next qualifying session, but he believes there could be multiple threats to McLaren throughout the weekend.
“It’s always difficult to know on a sprint weekend whether you’re on top of it from the moment you hit the track, but I think the car felt really good all day,” he said. “We made some good adjustments in qualifying, which was nice, and I think the pace was there all day, so hopefully we can keep that going.
“Not necessarily [a surprise to have Russell P2]. I think they looked very fast at the start of practice. The Mercedes is often a bit difficult to read. I think it got quite messy at the end when we were trying to get a lap in, so I don’t know if Lando did his lap well, but that’s not a big surprise.”
Norris was left to regret letting Alex Albon pass on his outlap in a move that affected his tire preparation, in an SQ3 session that included a number of other minor mistakes, as he failed to improve on his final effort.
“The pace was there,” said Norris. “On my first lap I just made a mistake in the last corner and couldn’t get it done.
“I mean, I’m here to try to win. So I’ll see what I can find tonight and see what we can do for tomorrow. It’s impossible to overtake, so I think I’ll probably finish P3. But if I can at least get George off the line or something, then that’s probably the most I can hope for.”
While the two McLarens are in the top three, Verstappen will start from sixth after complaining that his car was bouncing throughout the session.
“Yes, not good from the first lap,” said Verstappen. “Just really bad bounce and really aggressive understeer that turns into oversteer at high speed. Not what you want to be going fast. Then you’re locked in and of course we tried changing a few things on the steering but that never really worked. So yeah, that made it quite difficult.”
“With this balance, tomorrow in the Sprint won’t be as fun anyway. It will be more about just trying to survive, I think, and then make some changes in qualifying.”
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