The Australian finished seventh in the sprint before qualifying eighth for Sunday’s grand prix, marking his lowest qualifying result of the 2026 season.
Lando Norris fared better across Saturday, charging from sixth to third in the sprint before qualifying sixth, but McLaren remained well adrift of Mercedes and Ferrari across both sessions.
Piastri said the team was still trying to understand why the car had been so difficult to manage across the weekend.
“Yeah there was a lot of it. Just struggled a lot with rear grip,” Piastri told Sky Sports when asked about how much head scratching had been happening on his side of the garage.
“We thought we made some pretty sensible changes into qualifying, but they just didn’t really have the impact we were hoping for I guess.
“So, yeah, a bit of a surprise as to why it’s been so tricky the whole weekend.
“We’ve been battling with the balance of the car the whole weekend which normally I feel like we just feel like we lack grip and downforce.
“This weekend it’s been a pretty big handful to drive the car. So hopefully we can see what we can do tomorrow and make it a little bit nicer.”
The result compounded a frustrating weekend for Piastri, who started and finished seventh in the sprint despite being involved in a hectic early battle with Norris, George Russell, Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc.
He said the opening laps had been difficult to read from inside the car as the pack fought for position behind the leaders.
“Yeah it was pretty chaotic. That’s for sure,” Piastri said.
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“I mean it was very hard to work out what was going on in the car. Just trying to avoid crashing into the back of people most of the time.
“So pretty chaotic. I think a few things we can do a bit better for sure.
“But yeah, we also want to improve the car a bit because we’re struggling a little bit. I think the pace looked okay then. Just very difficult to get that out of the car.”
Piastri said McLaren’s starts had again been a strength, but admitted there was little else to be satisfied with heading into the grand prix.
“Our starts all year have been strong,” he said.
“I was surprised it was so good. But I think that’s definitely the positive.
“I think everything else we need to improve a little bit.”
Looking ahead to Sunday, Piastri said the most realistic target was trying to move ahead of the Red Bull pair, with Verstappen seventh and Isack Hadjar fifth on the grid.
“I think trying to beat the Red Bulls is probably the main opportunity,” Piastri said.
“Maybe we can beat the Ferarris, but I’m not particularly optimistic. So we’ll see how we go.
“I mean the first few laps of the sprint this morning were chaos. So hopefully we can get amongst it and hang on from there.”
Norris was more upbeat after the sprint, where he made early progress and held third despite McLaren managing fuel and lacking the pace of the leading pair.
“I was managing quite a lot. I’m very happy with today,” Norris told Sky Sports.
“It was a very good result. Always nice to do it here as well over any other tracks. So a pleasant surprise.
“Very good launch. Very good opening lap. Some good battles with both George and with Max as well. So well fought and just better than I was expecting.
“It wasn’t like the pace was crazy strong, because these guys just checked out and disappeared.
“But the fact I managed to hold on and not make mistakes and things was good. So I’m very happy with today.”
However, Norris was far more downbeat after qualifying, admitting McLaren’s lack of pace was too large to explain away.
“This is just quite poor from our side,” Norris said.
“But a track like this is just efficiency of car at the same time. We’re losing in cornering and we’re also losing a pretty insane amount in the sraights.
“But that’s just efficiency. That’s just understanding of this car and the dynamics of this car.
“And the two teams that understand it better than everyone, Ferrari and Mercedes, are the guys who are way ahead.
“So no excuses. We know we’ve not done a good enough job. But the guys and girls are working hard. We just need to play a lot of catch up.”
Norris said McLaren could not afford to wait for gradual progress if it wanted to close the gap to the front.
“We need to catch up eight tenths and we want to be ahead by two tenths,” he said.
“So it’s a mixture of a lot of things. It’s still stuff that will take time.
“But the team know that time is not on our side. Like we don’t have all day and all week and all month to slowly understand it.
“We’ve got to understand the car now and we’ve got to bring parts to the car as quickly as possible and quicker than every other team.”
Team principal Andrea Stella said after the sprint that McLaren had found some performance since practice, but conceded Hamilton and Antonelli had been quicker.
“Well enough pace to keep up in P3. If we look at Hamilton and Antonelli, [they] seem decently faster than us,” Stella told Sky Sports.
“So we know we have work to do. But in a way, considering that we started this weekend a little bit on the back foot in practice, we found some performance in the sprint quali.
“And it looks like we have found some further performance into the sprint. So we now need to keep improving the car.”
The British Grand Prix gets underway at 3pm local time on Sunday (12am AEST Monday).
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