Oscar Piastri described his pole position at the Dutch Grand Prix as a case of peaking at the right time, after beating teammate Lando Norris by just 0.012s.
Norris had looked the marginally quicker of the two McLaren drivers throughout practice at Zandvoort, a track where he won in dominant fashion a year ago. When it came to the first Q3 runs, however, Piastri set the faster time, and secured his fifth pole position of the season as neither driver could improve on their final attempts.
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“That was the definition of peaking at the right time,” Piastri said. “I think the whole weekend I’ve felt pretty good, but it’s just been a couple of corners that I’ve not been able to go any faster. I didn’t really go any faster in those corners, but I found some more elsewhere!
“So, super happy to come out with the result. Obviously, you’ve still got all the points tomorrow, but it was looking like a little bit of a tricky weekend so far, so to come out with that, I’m pretty stoked.
“You’ve just keep chipping away and that’s one of the nice things about having this much practice – you’ve got time to work on it. Like I said, I think I just improved the parts where I was already not bad and made up the difference that way. Still some things to try and improve and work on, but overall, very happy.”
Despite being beaten by Piastri, Norris was not too downbeat, pointing to a headwind on the pit straight as potentially costing him more time than his teammate.
“It feels quick around here, first of all, so I’ve been feeling pretty good the whole weekend, always in a good flow around here, which is important. Both my laps were good. I don’t think many people improved on their second runs, so I don’t know if the track got a little bit trickier or slower in the second run, but both were pretty close, I think, within half a tenth or a tenth of pole position.
“It was tricky also with the wind. It can easily just favor you or not favor you. And one hundredth is pretty minimal. Even coming out of the last corner, I’m a little bit up and I lose like two hundredths by the time I get to the start-finish line and that’s pole position gone for me.
“There’s not too much to complain about. I think there were a couple of places where I wasn’t quite on a good enough limit and consistently losing a little bit too much lap time today and this weekend. So, some places and things I need to work on, but otherwise the laps were good, and I was still pretty happy. “
Norris had to overtake Max Verstappen on his way to victory at Zandvoort a year ago, but says that’s a much taller order against Piastri given their respective performance levels.
“I mean – no offense to Max – he was in a much slower car last year. So that helps a lot,” Norris said. “Oscar’s in a much quicker car this year and the hardest guy to normally overtake is your teammate, especially when in a quali like today where we were split by one hundredth.
“So it’s going to take some magic, some good strategy or incredible tire saving or something. But it’s normally pretty difficult to overtake in the first place. It’s even harder to do that behind your teammate. So, I’ll see what I can dream of tonight.”