Oscar Piastri took his first F1 pole ahead of the 2025 Chinese GP. It had been quite a long time coming for the young McLaren driver, who has bested Daniel Ricciardo’s record and has now become Australia’s youngest pole sitter ever at age 23.
A great moment
Both of Piastri’s efforts during Q3 were impressive times below last year’s best effort, signed by Max Verstappen in 1:33.660s. However, the young talent wasn’t completely satisfied with his performance, as he said during the Parc Ferme interviews:
“I’m glad it looked like that because it didn’t feel like that. Q3, I just found a lot of pace. Q1 and Q2 I was genuinely struggling. The car just came alive in Q3, and I’m happy with what I did in the end. Even still, our laps were a bit scruffy, but no, very very happy.”
“I’m just pumped to be on pole.” Piastri concluded ecstatic after getting his fist F1 pole at the 2025 Chinese GP.
Piastri also gave his opinion on the repaving on the track surface, praising the better feeling but highlighting a potential issue:
“Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. I think with the new surface it’s extremely grippy, which for us it’s the best feeling in the world. The only thing that comes with that is when you lose grip, it bites at you. You’ve probably seen a lot of snaps, a lot of moments this weekend, and with the surface we’ve got it’s pretty tricky. But when you hook it up, it feels pretty mega. So I’ll take the fastest lap of Shanghai.”
Another successful Sprint weekend
It was overall a great day for the Australian driver, who had also achieved a strong second place finish in the earlier Sprint Race by completing an impressive move on reigning champion Max Verstappen.
He hopes that he will be able to carry the same positive feeling he had in the car over to tomorrow’s full length race:
“That is hopefully going to be a help, just got to make sure I keep that clean air. But I was pretty happy after the Sprint. I think we did the most that we could have, I was pretty happy. I would have been happier with one spot higher, but how the race turned out I couldn’t have asked for much more. So, like, we learned a lot this morning and looking forward to trying to put that into use tomorrow.”
Piastri returned on how it feels to finally be a F1 Pole sitter at the 2025 Chinese GP during the later press conference:
“It means a lot. Been close a few times now and yeah, nice to finally have my first pole. I’ve had a couple of Sprint poles, but to have the first Grand Prix pole means a bit more. So, pretty pumped, to be honest.”
“I’ve worked hard for it and I feel like the start of the season has been strong. Obviously, the result in Melbourne was a shame, but I feel like I’ve been doing a good job otherwise and yeah, just happy to have ended up on pole. Added the former Alpine Reserve driver.
How it happened:
He also broke down his Q3, the decisive segment which led him to become a first-time pole sitter:
“My first lap was honestly better than my second lap, but just at the hairpin at the end of the straight I lost a bit of time and didn’t do the best hairpin. Then the second lap I was about two-tenths down on myself, so I kind of just went, why not send it into the hairpin, and I gained those two-tenths back and then found a little bit more in the last corner.”
“So yeah, honestly, without that, I was tempted to box before that. I’m pretty happy now that I didn’t, but it was—I just did a good corner, that’s all.”
New day, new strategy
Yesterday Piastri and McLaren hadn’t impressed during the Sprint Qualifying. Nevertheless, the younger driver had outscored again his more experienced teammate and championship leader Lando Norris lounging from P3 compared to the Brit’s P6.
It was a learning experience for the team which had dominated the Australian Qualifying with a front row lockout, and it ultimately allowed the papayas to take their second pole of 2025 and a third in a row considering Norris’s Abu Dhabi exploit.
“Our car was fast yesterday. It was just the run plan we went for in Sprint qualifying I don’t think was the best one in the end. Today we knew that the session’s obviously a little bit longer so you can do two proper runs. So I think there were just a few things that in hindsight we could have done differently.”
“ Today the pace in the car has been more or less the same, we just executed it the way we should have. It’s been a good day overall, we learned a lot this morning. We learned a lot from Sprint qualy yesterday to translate into qualifying this afternoon and yeah, happy that it’s worked out.”
The Sprint Race was a learning experience
Tomorrow the Australian might take his first ever Formula 1 race win from pole, after winning in Hungary and Azerbaijan in the past season. However, certain aspects emerged after the earlier Sprint Race will be fundamental in achieving a third career success for the McLaren driver:
“Just making sure your tyres survive is the biggest thing. We saw this morning that those that could—or I would say look after their tyres, but that wasn’t even really true—the people that could manage the best one way or another were the quickest.”
“ I think for my own Sprint I felt like I did a reasonable job, it was just difficult trying to get past Max. But we saw with Lewis being out in front all morning, it probably helped him in the long run. It’s going to be a pretty interesting race. It’s the most deg we’ve probably seen and the most graining we’ve seen in a long time. So, it’ll be interesting to see if it stays the same tomorrow. “ Concluded Piastri, excited for the new challenge awaiting him tomorrow.
