"Driving an F1 car around this track in those conditions is probably the coolest thing ever," claims Piastri
Hot on the heels of his sprint victory and double pole positions at the Lusail International Circuit, McLaren driver Oscar Piastri was left to praise the track, claiming that "driving an F1 car around this track in those conditions is probably the coolest thing ever."
On the back of his brilliant performance in sprint qualifying, Oscar Piastri led from pole for the Sprint and was never troubled as he recorded his first Sprint win of the season and third on the bounce in Qatar.
His team-mate Lando Norris started from third on the grid, and could not make any progress from there, but he still managed to limit the damage with a third-place finish.
The two Mclaren drivers slugged it out all the way to the last laps of Q3. Norris seemed to have the upper hand until the very last flying lap, but he made a slight mistake on his ultimate hot lap which forced him to abort his effort. By contrast, Piastri put in a sensational effort to steal pole back for the penultimate race of the season.
Asked how important it was for him to take pole position on Saturday evening, Piastri said: "It obviously helps. Yeah. I mean, the next target is to try and get a good start and then, yeah, that should make life a bit easier if I can do a good job there.
"So far, so good. But there's obviously a long way to go. A couple of pit stops for tomorrow as well. So, there's still a lot that can happen, but everything's going well so far."
Pushed on to comment how it felt to go seven tenths of a second quicker on his pole lap during the Grand Prix quaifying compared to his best lap in sprint qualifying, Piastri added: I mean, I said on the in-lap, I think driving an F1 car around this track in those conditions is probably the coolest thing ever.
"You know, having those three right-hand corners not be corners according to your right foot is pretty remarkable. Obviously, the grip level is incredibly high and much higher than last night too
" So yeah, it's a lot of fun. Everything’s just felt good this week. The car has been in a nice window. I feel like I've been able to get comfortable with it pretty quickly and the results have followed.
"It's hard to pick a place where it's bad, to be honest," the Australian continued. "But I think the high-speed corners are the ones that feel the most impressive — you know, 13, 14, just getting flat out towards the end of qualifying.
"It's always pretty impressive there. But, I mean, the car's been good. On paper, it should suit us nicely — a lot of medium- and high-speed corners — and the results have followed that.
The Australian, who find himself 22 points behind his team-mate Lando Norris ahead of the final two races of the season, reckoned that the start will be his "biggest stress" on Sunday.
"I think the start is probably the biggest thing I need to get right tomorrow. I think we saw today with clean air, it's a massive advantage around here.
"And with the stint lengths, I think it's going to be a pretty fast-paced race. So that's probably the biggest thing to get right. But yeah, still a lot that can happen," Piastri noted.
