Oscar Piastri bemoans ‘scruffy’ attempt as Max Verstappen lands fresh blow

Oscar Piastri has bemoaned his “pretty scruffy” qualifying lap for the Sprint, as he starts behind his two championship rivals on Saturday.

The championship leader will start third at the Circuit of the Americas, with Max Verstappen and Lando Norris having claimed the front row positions.

Oscar Piastri: I feel fortunate to be third

With Norris topping the times in SQ1 and SQ2, Piastri never quite looked to have the same single-lap performance as his McLaren teammate around COTA on Friday.

This was borne out in SQ3 as Norris claimed provisional pole as the chequered flag fell, only for Verstappen to wrest it away from him by just seven-hundredths of a second.

Piastri was left a relatively disconnected third, almost four-tenths of a second behind Verstappen’s lap, and the Australian said he hadn’t quite managed to nail his one and only soft tyre lap in the critical part of Sprint Qualifying.

“Yeah, in quite a few places,” he told Sky F1, when asked if he knew where he’d lost the time.

“[It was] a pretty scruffy lap, to be honest, I think I just didn’t really get it together.

“So, in some ways, I feel a bit fortunate to be third, but I think the pace in the car is good.

“And it’s nothing major, it’s not like it’s been a disastrous day at all, it’s just been a little bit of a messy lap that I can hopefully tidy up tomorrow.”

As for what he hopes to achieve in the 19-lap race on Saturday before the weekend resets for the Grand Prix qualifying session, Piastri said, “We’ll see what happens at the start.

“If I can get a good launch, then try and put myself in the right spot, knowing where the right spot is into Turn 1 here is often tricky so I’ll see what happens up ahead.”

Lando Norris: Not a surprise a Red Bull is ahead

With Norris pipped to pole position as McLaren chases its first race victory since the Dutch Grand Prix, the British driver admitted that he wasn’t shocked to see Verstappen eclipse him when crunch time came.

“Of course, we’d love to be on pole, but it’s not a surprise for us to be just a bit slower than a Red Bull lately. So, yeah, still pretty happy,” he said, having asserted himself over Piastri in the intra-McLaren battle on Friday.

“I don’t know how much I was off by, but a little couple of things right here and there that I could have improved on, and I just caught a few bumps a little bit wrong, let’s say. But that’s just the difficulty of this track.

“Around here, you just have to be happy with not being very comfortable. I think that’s kind of the trick.

“Otherwise, the laps were pretty good, I found good steps of time throughout, it’s just easy to catch the bump in the wrong angle, or a bit too much throttle here or there over the bumps and, yeah, you probably lose seven-hundredths so… not the end of the world.

“But, of course, would have loved to be that little bit quicker.”

McLaren’s strength this year has been in races of high tyre degradation, which is expected around the hot, sticky, and bumpy COTA circuit, and Norris said he thinks McLaren can be stronger in race conditions.

“I certainly hope so. I think normally, our race pace is a bit better,” he said.

“We’ve struggled the whole year with our quali pace, especially when it’s close, and it’s been close the weekend so far.

“I would say, not a surprise, but we have more hopes for the race we can get back ahead.”

Andrea Stella: P2 and P3 a good result

Reflecting on a good day’s work, McLaren team boss Andrea Stella said it’s clear Red Bull’s RB21 is now capable of competing at a wide variety of circuits.

“I think this is actually a relatively genuine representation of the competitive field,” he said.

“It is very close at the top, it confirms that Red Bull has definitely improved their car, they are competitive now and can fight for victories and pole position at any kind of circuit.

“It’s also positive to see that our car here is competitive compared to some other venues in which we struggled a little bit so I think it’s a good result.

“Not the result we want, we are here for pole positions, obviously, but I think it’s a good foundation for the Sprint race tomorrow, and also a good foundation to see where we can fine-tune a little bit of performance and give it another go at the pole position tomorrow.”

Like Norris, Stella pointed out that greater levels of tyre degradation than has been evident in recent races could play into McLaren’s hands.

“I think, here in Austin, we should observe more tyre degradation. The conditions are very hot,” he said.

“I think we come from races where it was it was a little bit of a procession, because there wasn’t much tyre degradation.

“I would expect here that the race or the Sprint may be more entertaining, and there could be more variability based on the behavior of the tyres. Normally, our car is decent when there is higher degradation.

“So for many reasons, including this one, we look forward to the Sprint race.”

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