‘special’ disappointment
“It still seems incredible to be disappointed with a front row, having narrowly missed out on pole. We’ll see what we can do this afternoon.” These few words released by Oscar Piastri after today’s Sprint Shootout perfectly sum up the last two months of the entire McLaren team, who went from being the Cinderella team on the grid, often struggling to get into the top-10, to second best car of the championship, behind only the unattainable Red Bull. Today, however, Max Verstappen’s RB19 was actually less dominant than usual and – thanks to the particular weather and track conditions – Piastri’s papaya-colored car really came within the blink of an eye of the feat.
The ever more astonishing Australian rookie was just 11 thousandths away from winning the pole start in this afternoon’s race. But the bitterness for the first position that got out of hand was soon compensated for by the awareness of having a truly competitive car under any circumstances.
Second place is better at Spa
Piastri then also found positive sides in the starting position, making fun of having ‘left’ Verstappen the first box of the grid: “If there’s a track where you want to start second instead of first, it’s probably this one, so I’ll say I did it on purpose”, joked the Melbourne driver, referring to the possibility of slipstreaming Verstappen on the long Kemmel straight.
More seriously, Daniel Ricciardo’s replacement did not identify a specific section of the circuit in which he would have lost the ‘infamous’ 11 thousandths. “Such an amount of time can be lost in so many points and very easily, so I was actually very happy at the end of my lap: I thought I did a good job. There are always some points in the lap where you think you could have earned 11 thousandths – concluded Piastri – but it was still a very good session. It is clear that our car really likes these conditions; yesterday in Q2 we did well in a similar situation”.
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