Championship leader Oscar Piastri will head into the F1 Hungarian GP from the front row after qualifying in P2.
McLaren appeared to be a step ahead of their competitors in all three practice runs leading up to Qualifying for the F1 Hungarian GP.
Consequently, they headed into Qualifying as the clear favorites for pole position, with the only question being whether Piastri or Norris would emerge on top by the end of the session as they topped Q1 and Q2 also.
However, in a surprising turn of events, both McLaren drivers had to concede pole to Ferrari star Charles Leclerc.
Piastri will line up on the front row for the start of the Hungarian GP, after narrowly missing out on pole by 0.026 seconds.
A bizarre and frustrating Qualifying for Piastri
In the Top 3 press conference, held after Qualifying for the Hungarian GP, Piastri summed up his session as ‘bizarre’ and ‘frustrating’.
The Australian notes that the changing conditions made it trickier, though he was quick to point out that it wasn’t an excuse.
“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.”
Q3 struggles
While Piastri doesn’t blame the result on the change of conditions, it was evident that McLaren lost time compared to their runs in Q2 of the Hungarian GP Qualifying.
The Championship leader wasn’t surprised about being half a second off on his first run in Q3 due to not adjusting as well to the increased wind.
On his second and final run in Q3, Piastri felt that he had done a better job, but his time did not improve.
“Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of what I just explained.
“My first lap in Q3, I wasn’t that surprised that it was half a second off because of some, I mean, mistakes is probably harsh on myself, but just not predicting what the wind was going to do in certain corners, maybe as well as I could have.
“But the second lap, I thought I did a better job of adjusting my expectations, and like I said, I didn’t go any faster.
“So yeah, a bit strange, one for us to look through, but it wasn’t very fun losing that half a second.”
Looking ahead to the race
The front row is not the worst place to start for Piastri, who claimed his maiden win on this very track after starting the race from P2 there last year.
Given his track record, the 24-year-old is confident about his chances for tomorrow’s Hungarian GP, though he notes that Leclerc has shown great pace all weekend and that the Hungaroring wasn’t the easiest track for overtakes.
“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.”
The start-finish straight was recently resurfaced, when asked whether he believed that could help grip levels on his P2 starting position, Piastri wasn’t too sure as he is still starting off the racing line.
“It’s hard to know.
“It’s still off the racing line, so I expect it to still have the same problems.
“But we’ll have to wait and see.”
