Oscar Piastri explains “crap” final lap after seventh in Madring qualifying
A downbeat Oscar Piastri described his Spanish Grand Prix qualifying as “shocking” and “messy”, having finished seventh while McLaren Formula 1 team-mate Lando Norris took pole position.
Piastri has been struggling for pace all weekend at the new Madring track. Save for FP3, he failed to break into the top six in any practice session or qualifying segment in Madrid.
Having been 0.360s slower than Norris in Q1 and 0.331s adrift in Q2, Piastri was seventh again after his first Q3 run, albeit just 0.017s down on the Briton.
However, the Australian improved by just 0.248s in his second attempt while Norris, despite what McLaren described as a three-tenth loss in the final corner, gained a whopping seven tenths to vault himself to pole position.
Piastri described his second Q3 lap as “pretty shocking” on Sky Sports F1 and gave more insight to written media.
“That was really just one of those sessions where you should hit the reset button and have another go,” he said. “Rather than struggling with anything massively, it was just quite messy. The first lap of Q1, I had to abort, and you just get yourself a bit out of sequence and out of the rhythm of it. On a track like this, it’s very easy to lose a lot of time, so that was that.
“Also, my last lap in Q3, I’m not surprised it’s that far off. It was pretty… crap. That’s how it goes sometimes, unfortunately.
Oscar Piastri, McLaren
Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images
“I think it’s been a bit of a better weekend, like Monza, in that I at least am happier with what the car’s doing. And today was simply just one of those sessions.”
Asked if at any point he thought the car could be driven to pole position, based on his team-mate’s feat, Piastri replied: “Probably not. I think if you did a good job, it felt like it could get higher than where we’d kind of been sitting. But I think to be on pole was clearly an impressive job.”
Piastri has now been outqualified by Norris 13-2 since the April break (sprints included), with an average deficit of 0.123s.
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