Piastri happy to put “difficult evening” behind

Having struggled for race pace at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, McLaren driver Oscar Piastri labelled his 50-lap race in Nevada as a “difficult evening”, and is happy to move on to Qatar for the penultimate round of the season.

McLaren endured a difficult weekend at Las Vegas. The team that has been regarded the quickest over the past months, looked in the mix in qualifying initially, but Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri failed to improve their lap times from Q1 in the same way as their rivals were able to in the following qualifying sections.

As a result, Norris, who had been the only driver with a mathematical chance to beat Max Verstappen for the drivers’ title in 2024, ended up only sixth quickest, but the more disappointing blow was for him that he finished behind his Dutch rival.

In the race, Norris had to out-score Verstappen by at least three points on in order to keep alive his dwindling title hopes. However, the British driver struggled for pace in the race and finished down in P5 while his championship rival was able to take fifth, with both replicating their respective starting positions.

His team-mate Oscar Piastri started from P8 on the grid, but was handed out a five-second time penalty for failing to take his grid box correctly. The Australian managed to gain a few places after his second pit stop, but his seventh-place finish was still a disappointing result.

“A very difficult evening, we just struggled with the tyres, so there’s definitely some things to look at. I don’t think we hoped for a whole lot more than where we finished, but obviously the gap was a bit disappointing. OK points and hopefully the next two are a bit more fun for us.

“Finally, congratulations to Max on winning the Driver’s Championship. He’s fought well throughout the year and is well deserving of this fourth championship.”