Oscar Piastri admitted that he was surprised to see the Mercedes of George Russell outpace McLaren to take pole position in Qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix, with the Australian having to settle for third while team mate Lando Norris was fifth on a day where he said the squad \u201cweren\u2019t quick enough\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a busy end to the session at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, Russell<\/a> claimed provisional pole before going even faster to seal the position<\/a> on the final runs, his lap of 1m 29.158s putting him 0.182s clear of Red Bull<\/a>\u2019s Max Verstappen<\/a>.<\/p>\n Piastri<\/a>, meanwhile, was nearly four-tenths off Russell\u2019s time in third. When asked after Qualifying if he felt that the result was the most he could have gotten out of the session, the 24-year-old responded: \u201cMore or less. I think there was a little bit left in it but not enough for pole.<\/p>\n \u201cUltimately I thought it was a pretty good session. It\u2019s just been a pretty good weekend \u2013 very solid, no major hiccups or anything like that. I think ultimately we just didn\u2019t quite have the pace, so we\u2019ll try and see what we can do tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n Pushed on whether it had been a surprise to see a Mercedes<\/a> ahead in pole position \u2013 with Verstappen also in front \u2013 Piastri added: \u201cIt was a surprise, yeah. I think the start of Qualifying we seemed pretty good, and then everyone else just seemed to find a lot of time and we didn\u2019t really.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was a bit of a surprise , but it\u2019s been a little bit weird this weekend. The tyres have been pretty tricky to switch on.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a few things changed from yesterday to today with the track and everyone\u2019s just been pretty close, and anyone that nails it has been towards the front. So just one of those kinds of weekends, but third\u2019s still not a bad result.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other side of the garage, Norris<\/a> conceded that he had felt more comfortable at the wheel of the MCL39 than during Friday\u2019s running<\/a>, but acknowledged that the squad were ultimately lacking pace in comparison to their competitors.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt happier with the car today,\u201d the Briton explained following his P5 result. \u201c[It\u2019s] just we weren\u2019t quick enough, clearly. The Mercedes are much, much faster, and I\u2019m sure between Oscar\u2019s and my lap is a tenth in it or something, or maybe a little bit more, but not the four that that we need or the three and a half that we need.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is what it is, but still I just didn\u2019t put it all together and you need to do that on a track like today, but I just didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n In terms of whether having a better feeling in the car gives him an additional sense of confidence for Sunday\u2019s race, Norris answered: \u201cNot really. This track\u2019s kind of where you qualify is more than likely where you\u2019re going to finish, but there are still chances so we\u2019ll have to wait and see.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri admitted that he was surprised to see the Mercedes of George Russell outpace McLaren to take…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-179092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}