Oscar Piastri admits ‘big surprise’ after holding off George Russell at Suzuka

Oscar Piastri said the true surprise for him at Suzuka was not taking the fight to Ferrari, but rather, holding off George Russell in the Mercedes.

In what Piastri regards as one of his “best weekends in F1”, the Melbourne native claimed P2 at the Japanese Grand Prix. With his first start of F1 2026, he opened his and McLaren’s podium account, and demonstrated that the reigning double champions can cause some “headaches” at the front.

Oscar Piastri hails one of best F1 weekends

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Piastri qualified at the head of row two in Suzuka, and a blistering start saw him take the race lead, as Mercedes’ George Russell and Kimi Antonelli lost places.

Russell eventually worked his way up to the back of Piastri’s McLaren, but was unable to find a route through.

Having made his sole pit-stop, Piastri was unfortunate with the timing of the Safety Car appearance. It allowed Antonelli to pit and stay ahead of Piastri.

Antonelli would pull away after the race restart, but Piastri claimed P2, a second and a half up the road from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who completed the podium.

Appearing alongside Antonelli and Leclerc in the post-race press conference, Piastri was asked whether he was surprised to have stayed ahead of Ferrari.

At the opening rounds, Mercedes and Ferrari had emerged as the leading teams.

“I think we felt like we could maybe stay ahead of Ferrari,” said Piastri.

“I think looking back at qualifying, clearly something wrong happened with the deployment for both Charles and Lewis, so I think the gap I had in qualifying flattered us a bit. And yeah, we thought that would be a challenge.

“And to be honest, I think Charles and I had very similar pace through most of the race. That was about what we expected.”

Piastri had not anticipated that outcome in his battle with Russell, though.

“I think being able to keep George behind was a big surprise,” he admitted.

“Once he got back into second, I thought that he was going to come past in about half a lap and I was going to settle in for second and wait for Kimi to do the same. But the fact that we could be so close to Mercedes and beat one of them, I think that was a much more pleasant surprise.”

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Lando Norris would cross the line P5 in the sister McLaren, marking an encouraging Grand Prix Sunday in Suzuka for the papaya team.

“I think this weekend was probably one of my best weekends in F1,” Piastri declared.

“I felt like I hit the ground running in practice, qualifying. I think we did a really good job of getting the car into the window I was happy with on Friday. I felt like I drove well in qualifying.

“In the race, yeah, there wasn’t anything more we could have done. We got a good start, the pace was good. I felt like I was strategic or smart with how I used the boost and how I managed that side of racing.

“Our strategy was good, we didn’t blink too early. Obviously, the Safety Car was a shame, but I think as race weekends go, we couldn’t have done any better than that.

“So yeah, for me, I’m very happy with the performance that I put in, very happy with the performance from the whole team.

“Clearly, we’ve still got some, firstly, performance to find, but also on Lando’s side of the garage was a pretty interrupted weekend with all the issues, and clearly the start of the season has not been easy for us with reliability, so we’ve got a long way to go. But yeah, I think we showed that if we get everything as good as we can get it, then we can cause a few headaches.”

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