{"id":905532,"date":"2026-09-25T23:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T23:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905532\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T23:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T23:36:12","slug":"oscar-piastri-i-need-a-tow-bar-to-hook-onto-mercedes-to-fight-for-baku-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905532\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri: I need a tow bar to hook onto Mercedes to fight for Baku win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having qualified third in Baku after enduring a difficult build-up to the main sessions, Oscar\u00a0Piastri<\/a> was happy with the grid position he earned for Formula 1’s Azerbaijan Grand\u00a0Prix.<\/p>\n

However, the McLaren<\/a> driver thinks expecting to go much further in the race is unrealistic, given the gap to Mercedes<\/a>. While the Australian lost just 0.001s to Charles Leclerc<\/a> in Q3, the deficit to George Russell<\/a> was a massive 0.838s.<\/p>\n

So when he was asked during the post-qualifying press conference whether he could challenge the Briton in the race, Piastri resorted to sarcasm.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he\u2019s got a tow bar that I can hook onto the back of, maybe,” he smiled. “But yeah, we’ll see what we can do.”<\/p>\n

Given the gap Russell managed to build over his rivals, it’s easy to suggest his Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli would have joined him on the front row had he not crashed in Q1 – and at a track where it’s relatively easy to overtake, it’s not entirely out of the question that Antonelli could still challenge Piastri in the race.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

What’s more, the McLarens didn’t look particularly strong during the practice sessions, which could serve as a hint that the papaya cars may actually be on the defensive rather than the attack on race day. Piastri conceded that the weekend has been difficult for the Woking squad – but qualifying delivered a somewhat unexpected result.<\/p>\n

Having not finished higher than sixth in any of the practice sessions, he was even briefly first during Q3, but that wasn’t really a representative picture at a track which doesn’t particularly suit this year’s McLaren car.<\/p>\n

On top of that, Piastri experienced a brake issue on Friday morning, forcing his team to use some unusual methods to combat the vibrations – tying some parts together with cable ties in order not to lose track time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s been not an easy weekend, for sure, from a few areas,” Piastri said. “You know, we’ve not been particularly quick. We were also running cable ties on our car through Friday, which is never a great sign. So it’s been a little bit of a tricky one for us.<\/p>\n

\"George <\/p>\n

George Russell, Mercedes, Oscar Piastri,\u00a0McLaren<\/p>\n

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

\u201cIn qualifying we found a bit of pace. So, yeah, it\u2019s not the first time that\u2019s happened to us this year. We seem like we\u2019re a bit on the back foot through practice, we come out in qualifying and, yeah, we just find that bit extra.<\/p>\n

“I was pretty surprised to see us 1-2 after the first lap of Q3, but unfortunately, we had no hope against George.”<\/p>\n

Still, the Australian reckons McLaren can fight the other teams on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Mercedes look incredibly quick here,” he said, “but\u00a0everyone else looks like they\u2019re in a similar-ish kind of pack. And our race pace looked pretty good yesterday, to be honest. So I think we can hang on and battle in the pack behind George, and see what lap Kimi starts coming through as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Piastri’s team-mate Lando Norris<\/a> will line up fifth on the grid.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having qualified third in Baku after enduring a difficult build-up to the main sessions, Oscar\u00a0Piastri was happy with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":905533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,98125,98975,817,813,816,913,2333,473376,85],"class_list":["post-905532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-azerbaijan-gp","tag-baku-city-circuit","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-mclaren","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-oscar-piastri-i-need-a-tow-bar-to-hook-onto-mercedes-to-fight-for-baku-win","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905532","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=905532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/905533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}