F1 | Piastri: “It’s a shame to be 3rd, but victory is within reach”

McLaren had a great time today at Zandvoort, with Lando Norris managing to stifle the roar of the Dutch fans, taking pole position at the home of his friend-enemy Max Verstappen. If you want to find a flaw in the Woking team’s day, perhaps it is the result of Oscar Piastri, because the MCL38 seemed to have the potential to monopolize the front row, but the Australian driver allowed the Dutchman to slip between him and his teammate.

The gap of almost half a second gained over his pit neighbor says a lot about the fact that Piastri probably failed to exploit the full potential of his single-seater on the decisive lap. A concept that was also substantially shared by the person directly involved in the parc fermé, Jolyon Palmer’s microphone.

“I didn’t do a good enough job. My first lap in Q3 was quite solid, but in the second lap, especially in the second half, I didn’t do what was necessary. But the car is very fast this weekend, so I’m very disappointed not to be a little bit further ahead. But there’s still the race and I hope I can bring home a lot of good points and maybe a trophy,” Piastri said.

The Australian was also asked about the updates introduced by McLaren this weekend, which he believes have made the car more competitive even if the wind and rain of these first two days in Holland have made it difficult to understand.

“They are behaving as we expected. When everyone is so close, putting new things on the car is always positive. It wasn’t the easiest condition to understand if they work or not, but if the car is faster, as it seemed, we have to be happy.”

Despite the second row, he is not shy about thinking about winning tomorrow’s race: “It’s definitely not out of reach, because the pace seemed good in the race simulation and we’ve been quite fast in the last few weekends too. So we hope to have a good day tomorrow, starting well and trying to recover some positions. We have good prospects for tomorrow.”