Piastri brands Hungaroring qualifying as "a bizarre session after his terrible" Q3 qualfying laps

Having failed to convert his encouraging practice performance into a pole position at the Hungaroring, McLaren's Oscar Piastri branded his all-important qualifying outing as "a bizarre session after his terrible" Q3 qualfying laps .

McLaren showed eye-catching pace across the practice sessions, with Lando Norris dominating the Friday’s practices before his team-mate Oscar Piastri bounced back in the third and final session.

However, the MCL39 looked to struggle slightly when conditions changed for qualifying. Despite this, it looked to all the world that Norris and Piastri will battle it out for the pole position as they topped the timing sheets in Q1 and Q2.

However, they were unable to improve their times on their second set of soft tyres massively, whilst Ferrari's Charles Leclerc found a big improvement to snatch away the pole position from Piastri and Norris who will line up second and third on the grid on Sunday.

Asked to summarize his day at the Hungaroring, Piastri noted: "Depends where you're sat. If you're sat where Charles is, fantastic. If you're sat where I'm sat, bizarre and somewhat frustrating.

"But yeah, I mean, I think the conditions completely changed, and it was just weird. My first lap felt terrible because I was pushing too much and kind of with the wind direction from the first two sessions in mind.

"So, then I felt like I did a better job on the second lap of managing expectations, and it was even worse. So yeah, a bizarre session, but I need to look back and see what differences it made.

"Things definitely felt more tricky for myself as well in Q3, but I think for everybody it would have been difficult. So that's not our excuse," Piastri added.

Asked why he was unable to replicate what he had done before his final Q3 lap, the Australian stated: "I mean, it's kind of what I just explained.

"My first lap in Q3, I wasn't that surprised that it was half a second off because of some, I mean, mistakes is probably harsh on myself, but just not predicting what the wind was going to do in certain corners maybe as well as I could have.

"But the second lap, I thought I did a better job of adjusting my expectations, and like I said, I didn't go any faster. So yeah, a bit strange, one for us to look through, but it wasn't very fun losing that half a second."

Asked how confident he is that he can win the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday from the second place on the grid, Piastri said that the potential rain threat might have a huge influence on how the race pans out.

"Pretty confident. It was good last year, so hopefully it can be good again this year. But yeah, like Charles said, there's some rain around. We'll see if that impacts the race.

"But I think our pace has been good, but Charles has been quick all weekend, in certain sessions. It is a very difficult track to overtake on, and it's not going to be the easiest place to try and regain the lead."