Oscar Piastri delivered another of his trademark performances to qualify third for Sunday’s Formula 1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
The Australian will line up behind Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc for the final race of the year after steady progress throughout the weekend.
It’s been a trademark of the McLaren driver’s rookie year; starting slowly and building up to a strong qualifying performance.
That approach saw him deliver again on Saturday evening, out-performing Lando Norris who made a costly mistake on his final lap.
“The pace has been good the whole weekend,” Piastri said.
“I would say it was a bit of a surprise for me just how tight everything was at the start of qualifying; I think it was like four-tenths from first to 15th, so you couldn’t afford to make a mistake.”
Piastri started the weekend fifth fastest in opening practice.
He was then 10th in Free Practice 2 and third fastest in the final 60-minute hit out prior to qualifying.
That trademark measured approach allowed Piastri to capitalise on the underlying pace McLaren has enjoyed this weekend – the opening third of the lap a strength, though Sector 2 has proved more troublesome.
“We’ve been quick in Sector 1 all weekend, just seems to be our happy place around here,” he observed.
“Everything else is a bit up and down.
“[George] Russell’s been looking extremely quick in all the practices and Max said he was struggling a bit, so it’s been a bit hard to get a read on where everyone actually sits.
“But the normal stuff that we like, the medium speed corners, the high-speed corners, that’s where I think we’re strongest and the slow stuff is where we struggle a bit more.”
Piastri also struggled with balance early in the weekend, especially braking.
Negotiating the chicane at the end of the back straight has also proved a challenge – the slow speed nature not playing to the MCL60’s strengths.
Another hallmark of the 22-year-old’s debut season has been his brutal self-appraisals, which on Saturday saw him suggesting he has made too many mistakes.
“Yesterday I was struggling a lot with [turns] six and seven,” he explained.
“Just pulling the car up well enough was a big challenge. I think today I got on top of that.
“Also, some of the changes we made with the car made it a bit more difficult in some places, so today they’ve been a bit more random, and mainly from just trying too hard.
“The pace in all the corners without mistakes has been good all weekend,” he added, “just when I’ve made a mistake, it’s not been a small one – it’s been nearly a lap-ending mistake.
“So nice to tidy that up in to qualifying.”
With cars third and fifth, McLaren is optimistic of a positive race from Piastri and Norris.
The MCL60 has looked strong in key areas, which team boss Andrea Stella believes will offset the car’s weakness through the all-important Turn 6/7 complex.
“What we can see is that the car is actually developing a decent top speed in non-DRS conditions, so we expect that the race conditions we’re going to be actually quite decent from a straight-line speed point of view,” Stella explained.
“And especially in the first sector, I think we are going to be good in corners two and three which, in qualifying, that is flat – for the race, you have to lift.
“Hopefully, we will be faster than some other cars around us, which then puts us in a good condition for the hairpin, and so on.
“We think overtaking is possible, and we look forward to recovering some positions.”
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