Piastri ‘hadn’t done a lap without a major mistake’ until Q3

Oscar Piastri reveals that he had been struggling throughout the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix weekend up until the final segment of qualifying after securing third place on the grid.

The Australian lagged behind Lando Norris during the opening two stages but capitalised on his team-mate’s error at the end to seize a position on the second row.

Piastri concedes he had experienced trouble stringing together a clean lap around the Yas Marina Circuit up until the final qualifying effort of his rookie Formula 1 campaign.

“I don’t know what happened to Lando on the last lap,” Piastri said. “You know, I was struggling a little bit in the first two parts of quali, or certainly the first part, and yeah, I don’t know.

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“I’ve just been struggling to get it together this weekend. I think before qualifying I hadn’t done a lap without quite a major mistake this weekend. So I was struggling to get everything together. I think I did a much better job on that in qualifying, but I do like coming back here.”

While polesitter Max Verstappen credited setup changes to Red Bull’s turnaround, Piastri noted that some alterations to his McLaren car only accentuated his problems

“I would say yesterday I was struggling a lot with [Turns] six and seven, just pulling the car up well enough was a big challenge,” he explained. “I think today I got on top of that.

“I think also some of the changes we made with the car made it a bit more difficult in some places so today there’s been a bit more random and mainly just from trying too hard. The pace in all the corners without mistakes has been good all weekend. Just when I’ve made a mistake it’s not been a small one, it’s been nearly a lap-ending mistake.  

“So nice to tidy that up into qualifying, still a couple of moments that I wish I could have done a better job but no, all OK.”

But having overcome his difficulties, Piastri revelled in McLaren rebounding from a double Q1 elimination in Las Vegas to place two cars inside the top five for the final race.

“I think we knew Vegas was going to be a bit of a struggle for us going into the weekend. I think we got a few things wrong in qualifying that made it seem worse than it actually was,” the McLaren driver acknowledged.

“But we knew here would be a lot better. You know, the pace has been good the whole weekend, I would say.

“It was a bit of a surprise for me just how tight everything was at the start of qualifying. I think it was like four tenths from first to 15th in Q1, so you couldn’t afford to make a mistake but no, at the pointy end and nice to back in the top three.”