Piastri encouraged by McLaren progress after getting ‘a bit closer to Mercedes’ in Japanese GP Qualifying

Oscar Piastri has admitted that while McLaren still lack the pace to launch a serious challenge on Mercedes, his P3 result in Qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix marks an encouraging step forward for the team.

The Australian endured a disheartening first two rounds of the season as he crashed ahead of the formation lap of his home event in Australia, before an electrical issue in the power unit also prevented him from starting the Chinese Grand Prix.

Despite his lack of racing laps, he has produced some admirable performances at the Suzuka Circuit, topping the timesheets in FP2 and securing third place in Qualifying behind the Mercedes pair of Kimi Antonelli and George Russell.

“I think that was more or less all we had,” Piastri said after the session. “The last lap of Q3 wasn’t great but the first lap was pretty solid so all in all, I’m pretty happy with that. It’s nice to get a bit closer to Mercedes so hopefully we can stay there tomorrow.”

His best effort – a 1m 29.132s – was 0.354s adrift of Antonelli’s pole position time, indicating that McLaren still need to work on closing the deficit over one lap, but it remains to be seen exactly what Piastri can do at lights out.

The Woking outfit’s season has so far been impacted by reliability problems, with team mate Lando Norris, who qualified in fifth place, missing a significant portion of FP3 due to an ERS (Energy Recovery System) issue.

Nevertheless, Piastri believes that they have managed to take a step forward in Japan without bringing any major upgrades to the car, which could partly be down to the unique characteristics of the circuit.

“The car hasn’t changed in the three races we’ve had so it doesn’t really feel that different,” he explained. “I think maybe this track suits us a little bit better, and I think we’ve been able to exploit the power unit a bit better and just optimise things a bit more.

“I think we are clearly behind in terms of our package, but I didn’t think we got the most of it [in Australia or China]. I think this weekend we’ve done a really good job of that. It’s nice to be making some progress but there’s still a pretty big gap to find.”