Piastri ended Friday well adrift of the front-running Ferraris, with McLaren struggling to match the benchmark across both practice sessions.
The Australian finished FP1 ninth on the timesheets, more than one and a half seconds off Charles Leclerc’s fastest time, before improving slightly to seventh in FP2, though still more than a second off Lewis Hamilton’s session-topping Ferrari.
Reflecting on his day, Piastri admitted the picture inside the cockpit was as difficult as it looked from the outside.
“It felt okay,” he told Sky Sports.
“Not as speedy as we would like unfortunately. So yeah, a bit of a difficult one.
“I think we made a bit of progress for FP2. But I mean we went from a second-and-a-half off to a second off.
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“So it’s been a tough day for us for sure. So some things to find overnight definitely.”
Ferrari’s strong form had been expected heading into the weekend, but Piastri conceded McLaren had hoped to be much closer to the leading pace on a circuit where confidence and precision are critical.
“We always expected Ferrari to be quick and they look very very quick as well,” he said.
“But we were hoping we would be a fair bit closer.
“So let’s see what we can try and muster up for tomorrow.”
With only one practice session remaining before qualifying in Monaco, Piastri was also asked whether McLaren already had clear directions for overnight changes, but the Australian suggested there were no easy fixes on the table.
“Not massively, no,” he admitted.
“I think in today’s Formula 1 there’s never anything you can do to turn the car completely upside down. So we’ll try and find something for sure. Because we need to.
“But yeah. I don’t have any great ideas at the moment.”
While Piastri’s running was relatively straightforward compared to teammate Lando Norris, McLaren’s day was complicated further by an electrical issue that sidelined Norris during FP2.
McLaren Chief Technical Officer Rob Marshall confirmed the team is still working to understand the failure.
“We don’t know conclusively yet,” he told Sky Sports.
“He had an electrical problem on the car and it shut down. But we’ve not had enough time to go through the data and find out exactly what’s gone wrong yet.
“It could be anything, but it’s electrical.”
Marshall added that McLaren’s focus is now on improving the car’s behaviour through the lap, with particular attention on the opening sector where they appear to be losing time to Ferrari and Red Bull.
“I think we’re confident we can make it a bit better,” he said.
“I think we were struggling in the initial part of the lap. And then when it went through sector two and three, we started to be a bit more competitive.
“So I think maybe that’s tyre temperature or maybe something else.
“But we’ve got a bit of stuff to work on certainly in the first half of the lap.”
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