While Lando Norris took pole in Madrid, Oscar Piastri had to settle for a disappointing seventh place after a completely failed final lap.
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The contrast could hardly have been greater in the McLaren garage after the Spanish Grand Prix qualifying. On one side, Lando Norris snatched a spectacular pole position from Kimi Antonelli by only 11 thousandths. On the other, Oscar Piastri finished the session in a distant seventh place, nearly half a second behind his teammate.
The Australian did not look for excuses after leaving his MCL40. While his qualifying performances had improved in recent races, Piastri admits he simply missed his final attempt when it was absolutely necessary to improve.
“My second lap was catastrophic”
However, Piastri still had all his chances after his first attempt in Q3. His time was not enough to fight for pole, but the Australian felt he had done a relatively decent lap and could still hope to gain several positions on his last run.
Everything quickly got complicated from the first corner. Piastri never really managed to find his rhythm again and, on a circuit where the sequence of corners leaves little time to recover from a mistake, the rest of his lap directly suffered.
“The first lap wasn’t too bad, but the second was frankly catastrophic. It’s disappointing.”
The McLaren driver explains that some sectors were actually better than during his first attempt. But once the rhythm was lost, it became practically impossible for him to put together a clean enough lap.
“It started badly from the first corner. In some places, I was clearly better than in the previous lap, but once you lose the rhythm, the lap becomes very difficult.”
Nearly half a second behind Norris
The result is particularly hard to accept for Piastri when he looks across the garage. Norris managed to exploit the full potential of the McLaren at the decisive moment to set a time of 1’31″824 and claim his third pole in the last four Grands Prix.
Piastri was never able to get close to this benchmark. His best time remained nearly five tenths behind his teammate’s, a significant gap in a session where the top positions were decided by a few hundredths.
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The Australian will thus start only seventh, behind Norris, Antonelli, Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc, and George Russell. He will share the fourth row with Liam Lawson.
Piastri wishes he could redo the session
This underperformance is all the more frustrating because Piastri does not consider his McLaren fundamentally bad in Madrid. Before qualifying, the pace shown by the MCL40 seemed encouraging enough to hope for much better.
The problem was more about his ability to reproduce this performance consistently. On a particularly demanding Madring, the slightest mistake is enough to compromise several consecutive corners.
“It wasn’t a good session. Our pace was reasonable throughout the weekend, but the real challenge was to be able to exploit it consistently.”
Piastri ultimately sums up his frustration in a few words.
“Unfortunately, it’s the kind of session you’d like to be able to redo.”
A difficult comeback on the Madring
This seventh position could cost Piastri dearly on Sunday. Several drivers have already warned that overtaking opportunities are extremely limited on the new Madrid circuit. Verstappen notably believes that the braking zones were poorly designed to encourage attacks, while George Russell shares the same concerns.
Piastri will therefore probably have to rely on strategy and tire degradation to move up the order. The long runs on Friday showed significant wear for several teams, which could create pace differences and open some opportunities.
But while Norris will have the advantage of starting ahead of everyone, Piastri will have to get through a large part of the front group to hope to fight for the podium. After qualifying that he would immediately like to redo, the Australian now has no room for error.
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