Oscar Piastri’s take on McLaren’s Hungary qualifying: ‘Bizarre’ and ‘frustrating’
Oscar Piastri said that the qualifications for the Hungarian Grand Prix were “bizarre and somewhat frustrating” while the Charles Leclerc rival took shock pole, leaving him behind and Lando Norris in third.
The leader of the Piastri championship, who was the fastest during the final training earlier on Saturday, was only 0.026 seconds from Leclerc in the third quarter, while Norris exceeded the two training sessions on Friday.
While the clouds approached and the wind resumed between the T2 and the T2, the changing conditions saw the cars occur differently during the final shooting for the pole position with the McLaren pilots unable to improve their laptops.
Questioned by journalists how to summarize the qualification session, Piastri said: “It depends where you are sitting. If you are sitting where Charles Est, fantastic. If you are sitting where I sit, weird and a little frustrating.
“But yes, I mean, I think the conditions have changed completely, and it was just weird. My first round was terrible because I was pushing too much and in a way with the direction of the first two sessions in mind. So, so I had the impression of having done a better job in the second round to manage expectations, and it was even worse.
“So yes, a weird session, but I need to look back and see what differences it did. Things seemed to me more difficult for me too in Q3, but I think that for everyone, it would have been difficult. So this is not our excuse.”
When the same question was asked in Norris, which begins on the second row next to George Russell, fourth, he said: “I’m just going to copy and stick, yeah. Exactly the same thing.
“Q2 was very good, felt confident to improve. So, in Q3, aimed at similar turn, similar limits and felt quite terrible. Even things.
“I was not surprised that I was a 1: 15.4 in the first round. But in the second round, it is difficult to know how much more push or not. And I said to myself, oh, it’s a much better turn, and I had 1: 15.4.
“The wind has such a big effect on the car when you drive. It is quite easy if it is half a second swing. So yes, frustrating because we are certainly seeing a good gap, but in the first trimester, it seemed to move away from us as a team more than for the others.”
The second on the grid could perhaps work in favor of Piastri, because he won his first Formula 1 victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix last year of the second on the grid at Hungaroring.
In the Sunday race – the last Grand Prix before the August break – he said he felt “quite confident.
“It was good last year, so I hope it can be good this year. But yes, as Charles said, there is rain around it. We will see if it has an impact on the race. But I think our pace was good, but Charles was quick all weekend, in certain sessions.
“It is a very difficult track to exceed, and it will not be the easiest place to try to regain the lead,” he added.
– Follow the text of the text live from the Grand Prix from 1:15 p.m. BST Sunday on ESPN.
