having also finished fifth in the only practice session earlier in the day<\/a>.<\/p>\nDespite struggling with the handling of his McLaren throughout qualifying, Piastri was encouraged by the improvement he found when switching to the soft tyres for the decisive SQ3 runs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that was more or less what we could have done,\u201d Piastri told Sky Sports F1.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very tricky on a sprint weekend to get all the lap time out of the car here, but I felt like on the soft, things came alive a lot more.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was struggling on the medium, and then once I put the soft on, I felt pretty happy. So, yeah, not a bad effort.\u201d<\/p>\n
Piastri had encountered particular difficulties around Turns 2 and 3 during the day, with the challenging nature of the circuit continuing to expose some of the characteristics of his McLaren.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was struggling with a few things in the car through there. It was a little bit better now, but I think just the general feeling of the car is not any different to what it normally is,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to really wring its neck to be quick. Once we added a bit more grip in with the soft, it was a bit better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Norris, meanwhile, was left frustrated with fifth, having finished two places ahead of Piastri in practice before the positions were reversed in sprint qualifying.<\/p>\n
Asked whether the changing track conditions had played a role in his final result, the Briton accepted responsibility for his performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s the reason. I just don\u2019t think I put together a very good lap. That was all. No excuse.\u201d Norris told Sky Sports F1.<\/p>\n
McLaren had also been working to address a fuel injection issue, with Norris offering a cautiously positive assessment of the team\u2019s progress while acknowledging that investigations were continuing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think so. From what I\u2019ve seen so far. I don\u2019t know everything just yet. The guys are still looking into it. And it\u2019s been a busy day. But no, a lot of things seem good. We seem closer as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Singapore Grand Prix sprint gets underway at 5pm local time on Saturday (8pm AEDT).<\/p>\n
Verstappen snatches Singapore sprint pole with stunning late lap<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri will start the Singapore Grand Prix sprint in fourth. Image: XPB Images The Australian secured a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":921969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,1737,913,2333,37177,6490,85],"class_list":["post-921968","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-mclaren","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-singapore-gp","tag-slot3","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921968","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=921968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/921969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=921968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=921968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=921968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\u2018Not](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/XPB_1443172_HiRes.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOscar Piastri will start the Singapore Grand Prix sprint in fourth. Image: XPB Images<\/p>\n