Third place “not a result to be jumping up and down about”

Oscar Piastri admitted he was disappointed with his performance in qualifying after lapping almost half a second slower than his team mate.

While Lando Norris took pole position for Sunday’s Dutch Grand Prix, Piastri will line up third, having posted a time 0.499 seconds slower than his team mate.

Piastri went into the final round of qualifying having been just nine-thousandths of a second off Norris. He admitted his result therefore came as a disappointment.

“I didn’t crash like last year, so that was good,” he said. “Until the last lap, it was pretty good. But obviously, I think with the pace we had with the car today, P3 is not exactly a result to be jumping up and down about.

“The rest of qualifying was pretty good. It all ran smoothly and I think a lot of those things were positive, I just didn’t quite nail it when I needed to at the end. So a bit disappointing there, but we’ve still got a lot of opportunities starting from where we are.”

McLaren have brought a significant upgrade for their car this weekend. Previously, Norris has been the first to run their new parts, but both drivers have the latest parts this weekend. Piastri doesn’t believe the changes caused by the upgrade contributed to his disappointing result.

“The car feels very, very similar,” he said. “We’ve improved the car like a second and a half since last year or something crazy, and it doesn’t feel that different. So I don’t think it’s anything to do with that.

| Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

“I think simply Lando did a good job in the last run of Q3, and I didn’t do as good a job as I should have. It’s just down to that.”

Having failed to qualify on the front row, Piastri said his hopes for a strong race rest on making a quick start.

“If I can get myself into the lead, then that works well for me. The start is always a good opportunity to make up ground if you can.

“Obviously I want to finish as high as I can and if I can get into second, then obviously that makes life a little bit more straightforward for the team.

“But I’m not going to do anything specific to try and make that happen. I want to try and win the race myself. And let’s see what I can try and do.”