Piastri recovered to put in a strong performance in qualifying – but failed to improve on his final run, and was leapfrogged not only by Norris but also by Antonelli and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.<\/p>\n
His form in recent races is in stark contrast to earlier in the season, when he seemed unflappable, and there is a growing belief that the pressure of going for the championship may be getting to Piastri, who is in only his third season in F1.<\/p>\n
“Just feels like things are not flowing that easily at the moment, you know?” the 24-year-old said.<\/p>\n
“I had pretty good confidence in the car yesterday. Today felt like it was a bit trickier for everybody and just struggled to get the most out of the car.<\/p>\n
“I’ve still got the belief that I can go out and win races and win the championship but, you know, obviously things are not coming as easy as I’d like them to.”<\/p>\n
Asked about how he can limit further damage to his title hopes in the race, Piastri said: “Just try and pass a few cars for you, that’s all I can try and do, just try and capitalise on any opportunities that come up.<\/p>\n
“There’s also a bit of a question on what tyres to use because, you know, the soft has not looked great, it’s not been good in qualifying and it’s not looked great in the sprint either.<\/p>\n
“So I think there’s a bit of a question mark on that too and maybe that’ll give me some opportunities.”<\/p>\n
Norris, who was challenged hard for the sprint victory by Antonelli, expects a similarly tough battle with the 19-year-old Italian in the grand prix.<\/p>\n
Norris said: “I learned (in the sprint) that they’re pretty quick. And I learned that Kimi pushes all the way to the very end.<\/p>\n
“So, in some ways looking forward to it, some ways I’m not. I think it’s going to be a big challenge tomorrow. We have to see what the weather’s going to do again, but so far this weekend’s been clean. So, I’m hoping they don’t ruin it.”<\/p>\n
Antonelli, who is in his maiden season and has a best result so far of third place, said he hoped the expected cooler conditions would play into the hands of Mercedes.<\/p>\n
“The pace this morning was really strong,” he said. “It was also quite cold and tomorrow should be kind of the same. So maybe that can help us a little bit more.<\/p>\n
“But, you know, running in dirty air is never easy. Hopefully, we can have a strong pace and put pressure on them and hopefully we can fight for the win.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Piastri recovered to put in a strong performance in qualifying – but failed to improve on his final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-272960","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}