F1 News
Can McLaren beat Red Bull and Ferrari? This is Piastri's answer!
This weekend, Oscar Piastri drives in his second home Grand Prix in Australia in his career. The Melbourne-born driver seemed to be on track to beat his teammate, Lando Norris, for a long time, but in Q3, Piastri his time dropped. According to the McLaren driver himself, he made too many mistakes in the final part of qualifying.
Piastri versus Norris
Whereas Piastri was often slower than Norris in 2023, that is not the case so far in 2024. The Australian is currently four points ahead of his teammate. Even during qualifying in Australia, it seemed for a long time that he would be allowed to start ahead of Norris, but on the last lap of Q3, Norris jumped over Piastri. His lap actually earned the Briton third place, after a grid penalty for Sergio Perez. His teammate will start fifth.
"It's been a pretty solid weekend so far," Piastri began. "Q1 and Q2 were strong. I made too many mistakes in Q3. That was the biggest reason of why I am where I am. I think we could have done a couple of things a bit better in terms of out lap preparation too. But there was also my input in that outlap preparation as well. Just too many mistakes when it mattered today. I feel like, in terms of position, I was somewhat fortunate that I'm not further back. Not a terrible result, just a bit disappointing because I know there was more on the table."
'We need to do that to beat Red Bull and Ferrari '
The home driver does think it will be tough in the race: "I think we looked pretty strong in our race runs yesterday. But the cars around us also look strong, or at least the cars in front of us. So I think to beat Red Bull and Ferrari, we are going to need to find something extra or have a bit of good fortune. If we can finish around where we start and not go further backwards, that would honestly be a good day for us tomorrow."