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 only sixth.
Norris can become world champion this weekend as he holds 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 hitting the ground running in FP1, going on to secure Sprint pole by just 0.032s over George Russell.
“It’s been a good day, which is nice for a change,” Piastri said. “Just a day where things have clicked from the start and the Sprint qualifying session went really well. Pretty big moment on my lap, but was just enough in the end. Thanks to the team, great car and we’ve looked really good this weekend so far, so pretty happy with that.
“I think if you hook it up there’s a 1m19s in there, 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 tidy up, but it’s nice to be able to say that when you’re starting on pole. So 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’s difficult to know if his form can translate into similar on Saturday for the next qualifying session, but he believes there could be multiple threats to McLaren throughout the weekend.
“A Sprint weekend’s always really tough to know if you’re fully on top of things from when you roll into the track, but I think the car’s felt really good all day,” he said. “We made some good adjustments into qualifying, which was nice, and I think the pace was there all day. So hopefully we can keep that running.
“Not necessarily [a surprise to have Russell P2]. I think they looked very quick at the start of practice. The Mercedes is often a little bit difficult to read. I think at the end it got pretty messy with trying to get a lap in, so I don’t know if Lando got his lap in properly, but not a big surprise.”
Norris was left to rue letting Alex Albon past on his out-lap in a move that impacted his tire preparations, in an SQ3 session that featured a number of other small mistakes as he failed to improve on his final attempt.
“The pace was there,” Norris said. “I just made a mistake in the last corner on my first lap and didn’t put it together.
“I mean, I’m here to try and win. So, I’ll see what I can find overnight and see what we can do for tomorrow. It’s impossible to overtake, so I think I’m probably going to 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 starts from sixth after complaining about his car bouncing throughout the session.
“Yeah, not good from the first lap,” Verstappen said. “Just really bad bouncing and very aggressive understeer that would shift into oversteer in high speed. Not what you want to go fast. Then you’re locked in and we tried to, of course, change a few things on the wheel, but it never really worked. So, yeah, that made it quite tricky.
“With this balance, tomorrow in the Sprint at least, it will not be a lot of fun. It will be more about just trying to survive, I guess, and then make some changes going into qualifying.”
