Piastri "wasn't ever that tempted" to run the medium tyres in qualifying


Having grabbed third place on the grid for today's Canadian Grand Prix, championship leader Oscar Piastri claimed that he "wasn’t ever that tempted" to run Pirelli's medium tyres in the final qualifying segment.
McLaren endured a tough opening day at the Canadian Grand Prix, but the papaya team managed to make some progress for the final practice. Lando Norris set the benchmark in FP3 while his team-mate Oscar Piastri was still struggling, and he also clipped the Wall of Champions and punctured his rear wheel.
Norris was in contention for pole position, having set encouraging lap time in the early part of qualifying. However, he made a mistake on his first push lap in Q3, and he made another mistake on his last flying lap which left him in a disappointing seventh place on the grid.
His team-mate Piastri once again raised his bar in qualifying, and looked more and more comfortable in his MCL39 with every lap. However, it was still not enough to beat the Mercedes of George Russell and the Red Bull of Max Verstappen.
Asked to sum up his qualifying at Montreal, Piastri noted that he was happy after a series of three tough practice sessions where he was struggling.
"Much better than practice, that’s for sure. I mean, honestly, I’m quite happy here in P3. After all the practice sessions, I was struggling, obviously. I didn’t have a smooth session this morning, and, yeah, everything just felt more back to normal.
"In qualifying, everything came alive again. So, you know, there’ll always be the question—should we have gone for a Medium at the end? But I think with how we’d been going in practice, having just a clean run on the same compound seemed like the best idea for us, and honestly, I think it worked well. So honestly, pretty happy.
Although Verstappen and Russell opted to use Pirelli's medium tyres for their last run in Q3, Piastri refused to gamble and completed his final flying lap on the brand-new C6 rubber.
"I mean, we always kept it on the table, but I don’t think we were ever that—or I certainly wasn’t ever that tempted. Like I said, practice was pretty miserable.
Reviewing Quali with @OscarPiastri 🗣️🇨🇦#McLaren | #CanadianGP pic.twitter.com/3jPvTwMccR
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) June 14, 2025
"So, I just wanted to have a clean run through qualifying, not introduce any variables that could have made things even more difficult. That’s what we stuck to. I think it’s been a strength of ours so far this year—sticking to our guns and doing what we think is best for us.
"Would we have been on pole position on a Medium? Maybe. But there’s also the risk that it goes wrong, and you end up worse than we are now. So, I’m pretty happy.
Signing off with a word for his expectations for the race, Piastri said: "Again, Friday didn’t look great in any run, but I certainly feel more comfortable now than I did this morning and then yesterday.
"Our pace on race days is generally where we’re strong. These two next to me were very quick in the race runs yesterday, so it’s certainly not going to be a slam dunk win, but I think we’re definitely in the fight."