Oscar Piastri had to settle for third place in the competitive Canadian GP qualifying, but with everything still to play for in the race, the Australian felt good about the P3 start.
Montreal has been the first weekend of the season where it hasn’t felt like McLaren had a significant edge over the rest of the field. Both papaya drivers were in the fight for pole, but it was definitely that, a fight.
Piastri suffered an incident in FP3 which cut his track time short, but luckily for him, it had very little impact on his qualifying performance. He told Jacques Villenueve in Parc Fermé that after the incident. He was happy with a P3 start for the race.
“To be honest, after how practice went. I’m pretty happy with myself at the moment. So no, it was a nice turnaround.” He stated.
Tyres and race day hopes
There was discourse up and down the grid over the tyre choices for qualifying, with many drivers opting for the medium compound at different stages. Piastri touched on this but admitted he was happy with the team’s choice.
He said, “You know, there’s always the question, do you want a medium or do you want a soft for Q3? We went with a soft because we’re having a lot of problems. We just want to keep things consistent. So I’m pretty happy with third, which is a bit different this year.”
Currently, Oscar Piastri hold the championship lead by ten points to his teammate Lando Norris and 49 points back to Verstappen. With Lando Norris starting back in seventh for the Canadian GP, Piastri has a good chance of extending that gap after the race.
With Russell and Verstappen out ahead, a good start will be paramount to his chances of leaving the Canadian GP with a win. However, the Australian has the added comfort of knowing McLaren’s race pace in the 2025 season has been superior to those around them.
