Piastri acknowledged that the gap was big enough that he would need fortune to go his way.
“There’s still a chance,” he said, “and it’s played out that way a couple of times before. So, I know it’s not impossible.
“Obviously, I also know that it’s a bit of an outside shot. Even if I have a perfect final two weekends, I can’t just rely on that. I need other things to go my way and I’m very aware of that.
“So, I’m just going to try and have the best weekends I can, which I try and do every weekend and see what happens to everyone else basically.”
Piastri has struggled for pace in a number of recent races but said he was confident he would be strong in Qatar.
“Confident, I would say,” he said. “It’s a circuit that I’ve enjoyed – I’ve done well at it in the past.
“Vegas was looking reasonable from a pace point of view, just qualifying the end of Q3 didn’t go how I wanted and then the race – obviously the race was what it was and a few mistakes in there, but the pace when I had clean air to be able to use my pace was pretty good.
“So I think we’ve already found a lot of improvements in those kind of [low-grip] conditions, but obviously here is a much different circuit, much higher speed, very grippy Tarmac, pretty consistent, maybe some wind around, but pretty consistent temperatures at least. So, yeah, hopefully it can be good.”
Verstappen, who has won four of the past seven races, said: “Ready. See what happens.
“It’s closer. Ideally, I would love to have it a bit closer. We will try our best, go all in, and hopefully we can make it exciting the end.”