Oscar Piastri said qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix was “bizarre and somewhat frustrating” as rival Charles Leclerc took a shock pole position, leaving him behind in second place and Lando Norris in third.
Championship leader Piastri, who was quickest in final practice earlier on Saturday, was just 0.026 seconds off Leclerc in Q3, while Norris topped both of Friday’s practice sessions.
As the clouds drew in and wind picked up between Q2 and Q3, changing conditions saw the cars perform differently in the final shootout for pole position with the McLaren drivers unable to improve their lap times.
Asked by reporters how to sum up the qualifying session, Piastri said: “Depends where you’re sat. If you’re sat where Charles is, fantastic. If you’re sat where I’m sat, bizarre and somewhat frustrating.
“But yeah, I mean, I think the conditions completely changed, and it was just weird. My first lap felt terrible because I was pushing too much and kind of with the wind direction from the first two sessions in mind. So, then I felt like I did a better job on the second lap of managing expectations, and it was even worse.
“So yeah, a bizarre session, but I need to look back and see what differences it made. Things definitely felt more tricky for myself as well in Q3, but I think for everybody it would have been difficult. So that’s not our excuse.”
When the same question was put to Norris, who starts on the second row next to fourth-place George Russell, he said: “I’ll just copy and paste, yeah. Exactly the same.
“Q2 felt very good, felt confident to improve. So, into Q3, aiming for a similar lap time, similar limits, and just felt pretty dreadful. Same things.
“I wasn’t surprised that I was a 1:15.4 in the first run. But in the second lap, it’s just hard to know how much more to push or not push. And I was like, oh, it’s a much better lap, and I was 1:15.4 again. So just similar thing.
“The wind has such big effects on the car when you’re driving. It’s quite easy for it to be half a second swing. So yeah, frustrating because we definitely seem to have a good gap, but in Q3 it seemed to drift away from us as a team more than it did for others.”
Second on the grid could perhaps work in Piastri’s favor, as he took his maiden Formula 1 victory at last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix from second on the grid at the Hungaroring.
Looking ahead to Sunday’s race — the last grand prix before the August break — he said he was feeling “pretty confident.
“It was good last year, so hopefully it can be good again this year. But yeah, like Charles said, there’s some rain around. We’ll see if that impacts the race. But I think our pace has been good, but Charles has been quick all weekend, in certain sessions.
“It is a very difficult track to overtake on, and it’s not going to be the easiest place to try and regain the lead,” he added.
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