Oscar Piastri says the Qatar Grand Prix weekend has hit home so far after taking pole position in the sprint race with Lando Norris third and Max Verstappen sixth.
Norris could be crowned world champion this weekend as he has a 24-point lead over his two title rivals, but it was Piastri who topped qualifying for the first time since the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August. The Australian said his start in FP1 was key to his result, taking sprint pole just 0.032 seconds ahead of George Russell.
- Piastri beats Russell to take pole position for Qatar Sprint
“Today was a good day. Good for a change of pace,” Piastri said. “It was a good day from the start and the sprint qualifying session went very well. It was quite a big moment on the lap, but in the end it was enough. Thanks to the team, we have a great car and we have been really good so far this weekend so I am very happy.”
“Hopefully I’ll be in the 1:19 range, so we’ll see what we can do. But for now I’m happy with the result. Of course we need to sort out some things, but it’s nice to be able to say that when you start from pole position. So I’m looking forward to tomorrow. Of course, this is sprint pole position and we’ll get a few points, but we’ll take what we can get.”
Piastri said it was difficult to know whether his form could be similar for Saturday’s next qualifying session, but he believed there could be multiple threats for McLaren throughout the weekend.
“It’s always really difficult on sprint weekends to tell if you’re fully fit from the moment you hit the track, but I think the car felt really good all day,” he said. “We made some good adjustments heading into qualifying, so it was good and I think the pace was there all day. So, hopefully we can maintain that.”
“Not necessarily (I was surprised Russell was second). I think they looked very fast at the start of practice. Mercedes is often a little hard to read. I think they got pretty confused at the end trying to lap in. So I don’t know if Lando was able to lap in properly, but it wasn’t a big surprise.”
Norris regretted the SQ3 session, which affected his tire preparation and allowed him to overtake Alex Albon on his out lap, but there were a number of other small mistakes that prevented him from improving on his final attack.
“The pace was there,” Norris said. “I made a mistake on the last corner of the first lap and couldn’t get it together properly.
“I mean, I came here to win. So we’ll see what we can find overnight and think about what we can do for tomorrow. It’s impossible to overtake, so I think we’ll probably finish third. But if we can at least get George off the line or something, that’s probably the most I can hope for.”
While the two McLarens finished in the top three, Verstappen started from sixth after complaining of his car bouncing during the session.
“Yeah, it wasn’t good from the first lap,” Verstappen said. “Really bad bounce and very aggressive understeer, and at high speeds it goes into oversteer. It’s not something you want to go fast. Then it locks up, and of course we tried changing some things on the wheel, but it didn’t really work. So, yeah, that’s what made it so tricky.”
“With this balance, at least tomorrow’s sprint will not be as fun. We will just try to survive and then make some changes for qualifying.”
