Oscar Piastri secured eighth place on the starting grid for the Saudi Arabian GP. It’s the rookie’s first appearance in Q3.
McLaren’s rookie Oscar Piastri was able to achieve a Q3 appearance in qualifying for the Saudi Arabian GP. The Aussie was close to teammate Lando Norris all throughout free practice and could be ahead of him after the Brit hit the wall in early Q1.
Piastri managed to secure ninth place in qualifying, which will mean he’ll start eighth after Charles Leclerc’s penalty for changing to the third CE unit is applied.“Yeah, I don’t think we were expecting that going in. We got a good result, I was aiming to get out of Q1 first, which we did pretty well, and, yeah, put in some good laps, a good Q2 lap and the lap in Q3 was good as well. So it feels good to get in the top 10.”This result comes after a bad weekend for McLaren in Bahrain, in which Oscar had to retire on lap 13 after an electronic issue. The rookie is feeling more confident with the car, something that experienced driver Daniel Ricciardo couldn’t do in his two years at Woking.“It [the car] felt good, I think we were in a really good spot in FP3 with the balance and it transferred to qualifying as well which was nice. Feeling a little bit better than yesterday, I’m getting more confidence with the car as well so just getting back up to speed around Jeddah.“I had to work hard, but I wasn’t over-pushing or anything like that. I did a little bit of that in Bahrain and brought me unstuck. So I stuck to what I knew, gradually built up to it and that plan worked out. I felt good, felt in control, the car felt good tonight so hopefully it’s like that again tomorrow.
Jeddah is not a new track for Piastri. In Formula 2, he dominated the field, scoring a pole position, sprint race 2, and feature race win on his way to winning the championship. He was asked about his expectations for Sunday’s grand prix.
“I’m not sure, I think after yesterday we kind of thought our race pace might be a bit better than our one-lap pace so we’ll see what we’ve got. We’re not the quickest car in a straight line so we’ll see if we can hold people behind us but that will be good for us in the high-speed section with the extra downforce so we’ll see what we can do.
“This result probably wasn’t that expected, to be completely honest. We’ll try our best.
“Obviously we are starting in the points and hopefully we can finish there.”
