“Rather surprising,” “somewhat chaotic” – Oscar Piastri puzzled by disappointing Madring F1 qualifying.

A dejected Oscar Piastri labeled his qualifying performance at the Spanish Grand Prix as “shocking” and “messy”, finishing in seventh place while McLaren teammate Lando Norris secured pole position.

Piastri has faced challenges with pace throughout the weekend at the newly constructed Madring circuit. Aside from FP3, he was unable to break into the top six in any practice session or qualifying segment in Madrid.

Clocking in at 0.360s slower than Norris in Q1 and 0.331s behind in Q2, Piastri found himself in seventh again after his initial Q3 attempt, just 0.017s off the pace of the British driver.

However, the Australian managed to improve by only 0.248s in his second run, while Norris, despite what McLaren termed as a three-tenth loss in the final corner, remarkably gained seven tenths to secure pole position.

Piastri characterized his second Q3 lap as “pretty shocking” during an interview with Sky Sports F1 and elaborated further to written media.

“That was really just one of those sessions where you should hit the reset button and try again,” he remarked. “Rather than grappling with anything significant, it was just quite chaotic. I had to abort my first lap in Q1, and that sort of throws you out of sequence and disrupts your rhythm. On a track like this, it’s easy to lose a significant amount of time, so that was that.

“Also, my final lap in Q3, I'm not surprised it was that far off. It was pretty… poor. That’s how it goes sometimes, unfortunately.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren

“I think this weekend has been slightly better, similar to Monza, in that I’m at least more content with how the car is performing. Today was just one of those sessions.”

When asked if he ever believed the car could reach pole position, given his teammate's achievement, Piastri responded: “Probably not. I think if you executed a solid performance, it felt like it could finish higher than we had been. But to be on pole was clearly a remarkable effort.”

Piastri has now been outqualified by Norris 13-2 since the April break (including sprints), with an average deficit of 0.123s.