Piastri reveals secrets behind improved McLaren qualifying

McLaren enjoyed a strong qualifying result in Saudi Arabia as Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris ended the session in fifth and sixth respectively.

Oscar Piastri has revealed the details of McLaren’s performance after they secured the third row on the grid in Saudi Arabia.   

Piastri finished the session in fifth position and narrowly beat teammate Lando Norris who closely followed in sixth place.    “It demonstrated a better performance from McLaren in comparison to the first race of the season in Bahrain, where the pair obtained starting positions on the fourth row.”   

McLaren firmly believed that their performance in Bahrain would not accurately represent their true speed for the upcoming season, as they have historically faced challenges on this particular track layout. 

Piastri stated that the track characteristics in Jeddah played into McLaren’s hands during qualifying.

“The car felt pretty good, it’s probably the happiest I’ve been with the car so far,” Piastri told media including RacingNews365.

“With the track surface here and the circuit layout as well, it’s just a little bit more friendly to us versus Bahrain.”

Piastri explains wall tap.
Piastri’s qualifying session almost concluded early as he clipped the outside wall on the exit of the final corner in Q1.

Explaining the escape, the two-time podium finisher revealed that set-up work on his car was too conservative during free practice which resulted in a more unpredictable car for qualifying.

“I think just purely on the setup side of things, we maybe weren’t aggressive enough in practice with certain things,” Piastri said.

“In qualifying, maybe [we] overdid it a little bit and [we] had to wind it back a bit.

“That’s mainly the limitation, I think our car still has the same limitations as when we go elsewhere.

“But maybe just the track grip here and the circuit layout helps us out a little bit. So sort of the same things that we’re trying to tackle.”