{"id":889943,"date":"2026-09-13T01:12:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T01:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/889943\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T01:12:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T01:12:12","slug":"pretty-shocking-quite-messy-oscar-piastri-bewildered-by-poor-madring-f1-qualifying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/889943\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cPretty shocking\u201d, \u201cquite messy\u201d \u2013 Oscar Piastri bewildered by poor Madring F1 qualifying"},"content":{"rendered":"

A downbeat Oscar Piastri<\/a> described his Spanish Grand Prix qualifying as \u201cshocking\u201d and \u201cmessy\u201d, having finished seventh while McLaren<\/a> Formula 1 team-mate Lando Norris<\/a> took pole position.<\/p>\n

Piastri has been struggling for pace all weekend at the new Madring track. Save for FP3, he failed to break into the top six in any practice session or qualifying segment in Madrid.<\/p>\n

Having been 0.360s slower than Norris in Q1 and 0.331s adrift in Q2, Piastri was seventh again after his first Q3 run, albeit just 0.017s down on the Briton.<\/p>\n

However, the Australian improved by just 0.248s in his second attempt while Norris, despite what McLaren described as a three-tenth loss in the final corner, gained a whopping seven tenths to vault himself to pole position.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

Piastri described his second Q3 lap as \u201cpretty shocking\u201d on Sky Sports F1 and gave more insight to written media.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was really just one of those sessions where you should hit the reset button and have another go,\u201d he said. \u201cRather than struggling with anything massively, it was just quite messy. The first lap of Q1, I had to abort, and you just get yourself a bit out of sequence and out of the rhythm of it. On a track like this, it’s very easy to lose a lot of time, so that was that.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso, my last lap in Q3, I’m not surprised it’s that far off. It was pretty\u2026 crap. That’s how it goes sometimes, unfortunately.<\/p>\n

\"Oscar <\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri, McLaren<\/p>\n

Photo by: Steven Tee \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it’s been a bit of a better weekend, like Monza, in that I at least am happier with what the car’s doing. And today was simply just one of those sessions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if at any point he thought the car could be driven to pole position, based on his team-mate\u2019s feat, Piastri replied: \u201cProbably not. I think if you did a good job, it felt like it could get higher than where we’d kind of been sitting. But I think to be on pole was clearly an impressive job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Piastri has now been outqualified by Norris 13-2 since the April break<\/a> (sprints included), with an average deficit of 0.123s.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

We want your opinion!<\/p>\n

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?<\/p>\n

Take our 5 minute survey.<\/a><\/p>\n

– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A downbeat Oscar Piastri described his Spanish Grand Prix qualifying as \u201cshocking\u201d and \u201cmessy\u201d, having finished seventh while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":889944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,1737,254733,913,254732,85,459591,459592],"class_list":["post-889943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lando-norris","tag-madring","tag-mclaren","tag-spanish-gp","tag-sports","tag-u201cpretty-shockingu201d","tag-u201cquite-messyu201d-u2013-oscar-piastri-bewildered-by-poor-madring-f1-qualifying"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889943","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=889943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}