Oscar Piastri described his qualifying experience for the Hungarian Grand Prix as “bizarre and somewhat frustrating.” His competitor Charles Leclerc surprised everyone by taking pole position, leaving Piastri in second place and Lando Norris in third.
Piastri, who leads the championship and was the fastest in final practice earlier that day, was only 0.026 seconds slower than Leclerc in Q3. Meanwhile, Norris had the best times in both practice sessions on Friday.
As clouds gathered and the wind picked up between Q2 and Q3, the changing conditions caused the cars to behave differently during the final round for pole position. The McLaren drivers couldn’t improve their lap times.
When reporters asked him to sum up his qualifying session, Piastri said, “It depends on your perspective. If you’re sitting where Charles is, it’s fantastic. If you’re where I am, it’s bizarre and somewhat frustrating.”
He continued, “The conditions changed completely, which made it feel weird. My first lap felt awful because I was trying too hard while considering the wind direction from the earlier sessions. I thought I did better on my second lap by managing my expectations, but it turned out even worse.
“It was a strange session overall, but I need to review what made a difference. Things definitely felt tougher for me in Q3, but I’m sure it was difficult for everyone else too. So that’s not an excuse.”
When Norris was asked the same question, he, who starts from the second row next to fourth-place George Russell, replied, “I’ll just copy and paste, yeah. Exactly the same.”
He said that Q2 felt really good and he was confident about improving. However, when he got to Q3, he aimed for a similar lap time and limits but felt pretty awful. It was the same issues.
Norris mentioned that he wasn’t surprised by his 1:15.4 in the first run. But during his second lap, it was hard to figure out how much more to push or not push. He thought it was a better lap, yet ended up with another 1:15.4. So it was just the same thing again.
He pointed out that wind can greatly affect the car while driving, making it easy for times to swing by half a second. It was frustrating because they seemed to have a solid gap initially, but in Q3, it felt like they lost ground as a team compared to others.
Being second on the grid might actually help Piastri, since he won his first Formula 1 race from that position at last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring.
As he looks forward to Sunday’s race—the final grand prix before the August break—he mentioned feeling “pretty confident.”
“It went well last year, so I hope it goes well again this year. But like Charles said, there is some rain in the forecast. We’ll see how that affects the race. However, I think our speed has been strong, even though Charles has been fast all weekend during certain sessions.
“This track makes it very hard to pass other drivers, so getting back into the lead won’t be easy,” he added.
