Piastri will line up one place ahead of teammate Lando Norris after a difficult qualifying session for McLaren, with the pair ending up seventh and eighth respectively in McLaren’s 1000th grand prix.
While the Woking squad initially appeared to make gains overnight following a challenging Friday, Piastri said the deficit to the frontrunners remained significant.
“After yesterday, yes,” Piastri said when asked if he expected to be qualifying as low as seventh.
“I think going into the weekend, no. But after the pace we had yesterday, it’s been a long time since we’ve been a second off on genuine pace. So yesterday was tough.”
The Melburnian explained that changes made ahead of qualifying improved the balance of the car but failed to unlock the outright performance needed to fight further up the order.
“Today I think we made the car better and the balance was nicer, but we were still half a second off,” he said.
“So we’re just lacking performance to the guys ahead this weekend and we just didn’t have enough.”
Piastri looked set to challenge for a higher position during the final phase of qualifying before losing time in the closing corners of his lap.
However, he believed the outcome would ultimately have been unchanged.
“On the first lap of Q3, yes. The second lap wasn’t too dissimilar,” he said on his pace in the final part of qualifying.
“But when you’re pushing that hard, you’re always going to have some wild moments.
“Even if the last few corners were perfect, maybe I would have been a bit closer to George [Russell].
“But I still would have been seventh.”
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Norris was equally realistic about McLaren’s prospects, admitting eighth place was largely in line with his expectations after a difficult weekend.
“I don’t know. I kind of did,” Norris said when told few would have predicted McLaren would qualify only eighth.
Asked if he expected to be closer to fifth or sixth, Norris replied: “Maybe P7. But you know [Isack] Hadjar did a good job. George did a good job obviously in a quicker car. So I don’t know. Can’t expect a lot more honestly.”
The reigning world champion said the deficit to the front-running teams had been impossible to ignore throughout the weekend.
“I think it’s just clear we’re a long way off. Around six or seven tenths off the pace, between Oscar and myself,” he said.
“There was more potential in it. And the car had probably potential to maybe do a low five or a high four.
“But even a high four doesn’t put us even up a position.
“It’s just the gap to the others is too extreme. It’s just not a weekend where we had confidence in the car. Where we had grip. Where we had that ability to push like we had last year.”
Despite making a mistake on his final Q3 run, Norris felt the bigger issue was the overall pace of the car rather than any individual error.
“I was pushing, I was up,” he said.
“I think there was, like I said, potential to do a low five or maybe even to get into the fours.
“With a magical lap could have maybe got a few more positions if I just created some magic.
“But it happens around here. Either I push and just do a slightly better lap time. Or I try and do something that’s going to put me one, two, three, four positions up the order and that’s what I was trying to go for today.
“It just didn’t pay off. But that’s life around Monaco.”
Looking ahead to Sunday’s race, Norris acknowledged opportunities could be limited but remained hopeful strategy or circumstances could help McLaren move forward.
“But it’s also Monaco. Not a lot of stuff can happen. But also a lot of things can happen,” he said.
“We’ll try to be aggressive with strategy. We’ll see if there’s anything, any luck that comes to our side with safety cars, VSCs, all of those things.
“There’s many things that can always happen and sometimes nothing can happen. So time will tell.”
McLaren’s struggles contrasted sharply with the battle at the front, where Kimi Antonelli secured a stunning pole position for Mercedes ahead of Max Verstappen, with Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc completing the top four.
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