Oscar Piastri called McLaren’s qualifying loss to Ferrari at the Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix “bizarre” after unexpected challenges derailed its dominant weekend.
The Australian driver narrowly missed out on pole at the Hungaroring to Charles Leclerc after the Monegasque pipped him to the fastest lap by a narrow margin of just 0.026s.
Piastri had stopped his team-mate Lando Norris from a clean sweep of free practice sessions by going fastest in FP3 ahead of qualifying.
With momentum in his favour following his victory at Spa-Francorchamps, the championship leader edged ahead once again after the first round of flying laps.
However, with a sudden change to the conditions at the track in Budapest, Piastri could not improve on his 1:15.398s on his second run.
In fact, his initial provisional pole time was still four tenths down on his fastest lap in Q2.
In the aftermath of being beaten to pole from out of nowhere, Piastri reflected on a rather unexpected result for McLaren when asked to explain what he just witnessed.
“Depends where you’re sat – if you’re sat where Charles is, fantastic – if you’re sat where I’m sat, bizarre and somewhat frustrating,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
“But yeah, I mean, I think the conditions completely changed, and it was just weird.
“My first lap felt terrible because I was pushing too much and kind of with the wind direction from the first two sessions in mind.
“So, then I felt like I did a better job on the second lap of managing expectations, and it was even worse.
“So yeah, a bizarre session, but I need to look back and see what differences it made.
“Things definitely felt more tricky for myself as well in Q3, but I think for everybody it would have been difficult. So that’s not our excuse.”
Piastri on Q3 struggles and optimism for the race despite challenges
The 24-year-old was candid about the unexpected drop in his Q3 performance, attributing it partly to misreading the changing wind conditions on track.
“My first lap in Q3, I wasn’t that surprised that it was half a second off because of some, I mean, mistakes is probably harsh on myself, but just not predicting what the wind was going to do in certain corners maybe as well as I could have,” he said.
“But the second lap, I thought I did a better job of adjusting my expectations, and like I said, I didn’t go any faster.
“So yeah, a bit strange, one for us to look through, but it wasn’t very fun losing that half a second.”
Looking ahead to the race, Piastri remains optimistic despite the qualifying setback.
“Pretty confident, it was good last year, so hopefully it can be good again this year,” he explained. “But yeah, like Charles said, there’s some rain around. We’ll see if that impacts the race.
“But I think our pace has been good, but Charles has been quick all weekend, in certain sessions.
“It is a very difficult track to overtake on, and it’s not going to be the easiest place to try and regain the lead.”
On the same topic, Piastri was cautious about how much grip the new asphalt on the start-finish line would actually provide on Sunday.
“It’s hard to know, it’s still off the racing line, so I expect it to still have the same problems, but we’ll have to wait and see,” he said.
READ MORE – McLaren admits driver caution and wind change behind missed F1 Hungarian GP pole
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