Oscar Piastri did not feel like things were going too bad in his McLaren during Mexican Grand Prix qualifying, yet the final result was emphatic.

Managing P7 only on the grid while McLaren teammate and title rival Lando Norris claimed an impressive pole, 1997 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve said it was “really strange” to hear that Piastri had a “reasonable” feeling in the car, despite a final deficit of almost six-tenths to Norris.

Baffled Oscar Piastri alerts Jacques Villeneuve

Piastri went into qualifying on the back foot compared to Norris, a position which did not change come the end of Q3. Norris uncorked a 1:15.586 to strip Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc of pole by a quarter of a second, while Piastri managed only the eighth-fastest time, 0.588 seconds slower than Norris.

A five-place grid penalty for Carlos Sainz – carried over from his US Grand Prix collision with Kimi Antonelli – promotes Piastri one position to seventh for the start on Sunday.

It was a very abnormal gulf between the McLaren drivers, yet Piastri told PlanetF1.com and other media outlets: “I feel like I’ve done some decent laps through the weekend, but everything seems to be about four or five-tenths off. So that’s obviously not a great sign.

“Ultimately, just a bit frustrated with how the session has gone. There’s a lot of things I could worry about, but ultimately, being that far off when you feel like you’ve done a reasonable job is a difficult place to be, and so that’s my biggest concern.”

Villeneuve, on Sky F1 punditry duties in Mexico, says a gap as stark as that between teammates, usually triggers the driver on the wrong side to really start pushing the boundaries, not find satisfaction in how the car was feeling.

He said: “What was odd, his comments about, I don’t know why there’s no pace, and when you say that you’re quite happy with the car, everything is feeling good, and somehow it’s not working on the clock.

“When you’re slower than your teammate by that amount, normally, you will try to push a little bit harder. You’ll get in trouble. You’ll lock wheels, so you’ll start to figure out, okay, there’s issues here and there. I can improve there.

“But he seemed to be happy with how the car was feeling, and that’s what’s really strange.”

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Piastri also teased “some fun” to come if he can unlock performance from his McLaren, though Sky F1 analyst Jamie Chadwick warned that progress could be hard to come by during the race.

In addition to highlighting a weaker tow effect in the high altitude of Mexico City, Chadwick also suggested that the converged F1 grid makes it harder for drivers to overtake each other.

“It’s not like he’s made one or two mistakes in a lap, and he can go, ‘Right, that’s exactly where the time is, and I can go and rectify that,’” said Chadwick. “I think the whole weekend is what Oscar was saying, is he’s been down on performance to Lando, the deficit hasn’t really changed.

“That’s frustrating for him, because he’ll feel like he’s making improvements. If you took away the lap time on his dash, he probably would have thought he was maybe top two, top three, if he knew that Lando was on pole. So that plays on your mind big time, and it’s really difficult to kind of work out and pinpoint exactly where it is.

“So it’s a challenge for him. It’s going to be a challenge for him tomorrow.

“Track position is also quite critical after Lap 1. Even though you’ve got this long, massive straight, the effect of the tow isn’t so significant.

“He’s going to have to get his elbows out tomorrow, which I think is going to be quite exciting to watch. He’s going to have to make some overtakes if their race pace is stronger.

“But at the moment, I honestly think what’s great about Formula 1 at the moment is how competitive it is. What’s not so great is because it’s so competitive and so close, it’s hard for them to actually make the difference in the race once qualifying has happened.”

Piastri enters the race 14 points ahead of Norris at the top of the Drivers’ Championship, and 40 points clear of Max Verstappen.

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Blackstock

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