The Australian was unable to match McLaren teammate Lando Norris during Saturday’s session, finishing four positions behind the reigning world champion after a difficult build-up to qualifying.
Piastri also brought out a brief red flag during Q3 when he ran wide at Stavelot and dragged gravel onto the circuit, interrupting the opening runs during the final part of qualifying.
He recovered to secure seventh but remained two tenths behind Norris, who produced what he described as one of the best qualifying laps of his career to take third.
Piastri said his difficulties began after an encouraging opening practice before the hydraulic issue that sidelined him for the opening part of FP2 limited his running later on Friday.
“It’s been a bit of a struggle. It started okay in FP1, but then yesterday we had an issue. So I missed the start and a little bit of FP2,” he said.
“But even the laps I did were tricky. And then today it’s been the same story. So eventually it was a little bit more respectable.
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“But it’s been a tough weekend that’s for sure.”
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Norris will drop 10 places from third after McLaren introduced a fourth power electronics unit on his car, promoting Piastri to sixth on the grid for the race on Sunday.
Despite being set to start further forward, the Australian was uncertain whether McLaren possessed the race pace required to challenge the cars ahead.
He said the hydraulics issue which interrupted his Friday running also left him without enough representative long-run data to confidently assess the team’s position.
“We don’t really know,” he said when asked about his race pace.
“We didn’t really do that many laps in FP2 in terms of race running. So it’s very hard to read where we are.
“But I think that the pack around us is very tight. We’re probably just at the back of it. So we’ll see what we can do.
“But it’s not going to be easy.”
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella acknowledged the small gap between his drivers had carried a significant cost because of the closely matched group behind Mercedes.
Norris qualified behind pole sitter Kimi Antonelli, while Piastri found himself behind both Ferraris and the second Mercedes of George Russell.
“I think it’s been a good session for us,” Stella said.
“P3 is a better result than some of the last results lately. Still the gap to the best Mercedes is large. We acknowledge that. But I think especially Lando drove very well. We maximised overall what was available in the car.
“I think the new wing we took here works well for the level of drag and downforce required in Belgium. So it was more about optimisation.
“Also a lot of work in optimising the power unit. Working in collaboration with HPP.
“There’s a couple of tenths between Lando and Oscar. But we see that with the tight competitive situation we have at the moment in two tenths, you can have three or four positions.”
McLaren introduced a revised rear wing for Spa alongside the Mercedes power unit update, although Norris had previously played down the outright performance benefit expected from the aerodynamic change.
Stella said the team was nevertheless satisfied with the integration of the latest engine specification after delaying its introduction while there was still usable mileage remaining on its existing components.
“We are happy to have the latest specification,” he said.
“We are happy with the optimisation working together with HPP. In this generation of Formula 1, there’s so much in the optimisation of the power unit, not only for the electrical side, but also the internal combustion engine.
“Happy so far. We will see also how this will help us tomorrow to go and grab important points.”
Norris said his third-place result represented the maximum available from the McLaren package, despite leaving him 0.456s behind Antonelli and 0.139s behind Max Verstappen.
“I was pretty happy with my lap. It was probably one of the best laps I’ve ever done in qualifying. So I was very happy, and very happy to be P3,” he said.
“It’s a shame it doesn’t matter for tomorrow because I’m starting P13 now. For the package that we have to be P3 is pretty amazing. So happy. Very pleased.”
The Briton was less optimistic about recovering sufficiently to challenge for the podium, pointing to the narrow advantage he held over the Ferrari drivers despite the quality of his final lap.
“I honestly don’t think so,” he said about his chance of a podium in the race.
“I don’t think the pace we have is good enough for P3 to come back from where we are now because it’s not like I’m two or three tenths ahead of the Ferrari’s.
“I’m half a tenth ahead with one of the best laps I’ve ever done in my life.
“So to fight back and overtake I think is going to be pretty difficult. But you never know.
“We’ll do our best. We’ll put in a good plan and we’ll execute the best race we can.”
The Belgian Grand Prix gets underway at 3pm local time on Sunday (11pm AEST).
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