Oscar Piastri admitted he was disappointed with his performance in qualifying after finishing almost half a second slower than his teammate.
While Lando Norris secured pole position for Sunday’s Dutch Grand Prix, Piastri will start the race in third place, having set a time 0.499 seconds slower than his teammate.
Piastri was only nine thousandths of a second behind Norris in the final qualifying round and admitted that his result was disappointing.
“I didn’t have an accident like last year, so that was good,” he said. “It was going quite well until the last lap. But I think with the pace we had with the car today, P3 is obviously not a result to be happy about.”
“The rest of qualifying was pretty good. It all went smoothly and I think a lot of those things were positive. I just didn’t quite get it done at the end when I should have. So that was a bit disappointing, but from where we are now we still have a lot of opportunities.”
McLaren brought a significant upgrade to its car this weekend. Previously, Norris was the first to use the new parts, but this weekend both drivers have the latest parts. Piastri does not believe the changes brought about by the upgrade contributed to his disappointing result.
“The car feels very, very similar,” he said. “We’ve improved the car by about a second and a half or so since last year and it doesn’t feel that different. So I don’t think it has anything to do with it.”
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“I think Lando just did a good job in the last run of Q3 and I didn’t do as well as I should have. That’s just the reason.”
Failing to qualify for the front row, Piastri said his hopes of a strong race rested on a fast start.
“If I can take the lead, that’s good for me. The start is always a good opportunity to make up ground if you can.
“Of course I want to finish as high up as possible and if I come second it will obviously make life a bit easier for the team.
“But I’m not going to do anything specific to achieve that. I want to try to win the race myself. And let’s see what I can try and do.”
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Dutch Grand Prix 2024
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