Oscar Piastri has joked that he hopes McLaren can bring “some 2023-spec upgrades” to its Formula 1 car, as it battles a lack of grip compared to the Mercedes.

The Australian said the team is already doing a better job of understanding what the works team is doing with power unit management and especially energy harvesting and deployment.

But Oscar Piastri finished Chinese Grand Prix qualifying in sixth, behind the two Ferraris and just ahead of team-mate Lando Norris in what was admittedly not a perfect lap.

“It’s always easy to say you can make up the time,” he said when asked about his session by Crash.net.

“And I think if you put my best sectors together, then it’s probably in the mix with the Ferraris, but optimising the power unit with how tricky the tyres are in these conditions, and the wind – I’m pretty sure everyone’s got a similar story.

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“So I think where we’ve ended up is pretty representative, and hopefully we’ve improved a little bit for the race tomorrow compared to the sprint.”

Piastri believes that McLaren has gotten closer to Mercedes this weekend, although the gap is clearly still a significant one.

“I think Melbourne, we should have been quite a lot closer than we were in qualifying,” he said. “The race obviously, I’ll never know. But I think the picture for Lando was pretty representative. And I think what we’ve seen this weekend is also pretty representative.

“We’ve got a little bit closer, but we’re still half a second off, so it’s not like where we’re even really in the mix at the moment.”

Expanding on what’s now needed he said: “We’ve got some grip to find. I think that seems to be the biggest thing.

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“I think if there’s been a positive, I think we’ve got more on top of the things we want from the power unit, how to implement them, and just doing a better job on that side. But unfortunately, you can’t make up for grip you don’t. have.”

Team boss Andrea Stella has indicated that upgrades are on their way, with Piastri joking that he hopes that the gains are significant enough to emulate its 2023 jump in performance.

“We’ll wait and see,” he said. “Hopefully we’ve got some 2023-spec upgrades! But it’s hard to say at the moment.

“I kind of feel like I leave every qualifying session at the moment thinking that we’ve done a pretty good job of maximising the power unit, and then we get back and find there’s a chunk of time that we didn’t realise.

“I think today, probably we have done a better job of that. I say that, everyone’s having the same kind of issues, so I think things are probably evening out a little bit from that side of things.

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“I think having two qualifying sessions on the same weekend helps a lot for everybody with that. But yeah, we obviously need some pretty big steps to be in the mix.”

Fighting Mercedes, Ferrari would be a ‘surprise’ for McLaren

Asked if McLaren can race the cars ahead on Sunday’s grid he said: “I would be a bit surprised if we can match them. Hopefully we’ve improved things from the sprint.

“But I think certainly with Antonelli, I think he had a pretty much everything that could go wrong go wrong in that [sprint] race, and he still finished ahead of me.

“Especially on a track like this, if you don’t have the car speeds, you don’t make up the time.”

Piastri also made an interesting observation on even how the switch from medium to soft tyres in sprint qualifying impacted PU management. “I think a lot of people got caught out by especially the big step in grip from the medium to the soft.

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“And I think everyone went quicker through the corners, didn’t have enough battery for the straight, and lost all that time plus more. Which is obviously a learning process, but it’s a bit of a painful learning process.

“So it has been better here. Melbourne was probably going to be as bad as it gets, but some of the quirks I don’t think are going away anytime soon.”

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