Oscar Piastri qualifies ahead of his teammate following a “stressful” session at Monza
McLaren’s Oscar Piastri put on a show at the Italian GP qualifying session having beaten his teammate yet again.
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Oscar Piastri (Via Imago)
F1 Rookie Oscar Piastri seems to be reaching new heights. At the start of the season, he struggled along with McLaren to get satisfactory results. Over the months, the mechanical and design aspects of the car changed allowing the Aussie driver to show his true potential. At this weekend’s Italian GP, the Q1 session turned out to be way more stressful for him than anticipated.
Oscar Piastri went on to qualify seventh for the Italian GP. This meant that he would start ahead of his experienced teammate, Lando Norris. Through the whole season, this is the third time that Oscar has outqualified Lando. The McLaren seems to lack the one lap pace that Ferrari and Red Bull seem to have. Even Williams’s Alex Albon managed to finish ahead of the Australian driver.
In an interview, here is what Oscar Piastri had to say about his session. “Q1 wasn’t my finest session ever. I went off by millimetres (at Lesmo), which was a bit annoying. But I knew the pace was there. Being on the hard, I knew the second lap on the tyre would still be reasonable,” he said. “It was a bit more stressful than I wanted but in the end, it didn’t make a difference,” he continued.
Q1 in Monza almost ended in disaster for Oscar Piastri
With five minutes remaining, Oscar Piastri had his lap time deleted as he went wide at Lesmo and exceeded track limits. Ahead of his second attempt on the hard tyres, Oscar was down in 19th position. Despite all the pressure, the Aussie went on to put a lap that was good enough to get him into Q2. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that this was Oscar Piastri’s best qualifying session till date.
On the other hand, Ferrari put on a show at Monza as Carlos Sainz beat Max Verstappen by 0.013 seconds to earn pole position in front of this Tifosi. This translates to added pressure for Sunday’s race. It will be interesting to see if McLaren are able to repeat their 2021 results, though it’s highly unlikely. All eyes will be on the front today.
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Varad Joshi
(940 Articles Published)