Piastri hopes Suzuka race won't repeat itself in Jeddah

Despite McLaren's dominant performance in Jeddah, Oscar Piastri was denied pole position, but he hopes that the DRS zones will help him challenge reigning champion Max Verstappen for the victory.

Following their strong performance during Friday's practice sessions, McLaren were once again quick in the third and final practie which meant that the papaya team went into qualifying as favourites.

Despite making it to Q3 with ease, Lando Norris suffered a high-speed crash on his first flying lap as he carried too much speed into Turn 4, hitting the kerb which in turn sent him into the wall and out of the session.

His team-mate Oscar Piastri also looked strong, but Red Bull and Mercedes unexpectedly closed in on the Woking-based outfit for the dying stages of qualifying, and reigning champion managed to beat the Melbourne-born driver, who wound up second, 0.010s off pole.

Reflecting on the qualifying session, Piastri noted that his laps felt alright: "At the time, I felt like it was a good lap, yes. I made a bit of a mistake on the first lap and managed to get through that corner much better on the second attempt.

"And, you know, when you need one hundredth, you can think of a few places. But, no, honestly, it was a good lap that I was happy with. Max did a very good job today, and that was pretty much all we had."

Asked about how destabilising the red flag was in the third and final qualifying segment, Piastri denied that it would have affected him.

"It was alright for me. I was the only one with a lap on the board. I knew that lap probably wasn't going to be enough anyway. So I knew that I would have to go back out and improve. But it's a little bit nicer when you have a lap already on the board.

"But again, when you know you have to go out there and do a better job, then it kind of renders that one somewhat useless. I also saw that Max was a thousandth faster before I went back out, so I knew that I had to improve to get back on pole. It was a good lap. No regrets, really.

Asked whether he can overtake Verstappen in the race, Piastri said: "I'll see how I feel. I think we've got good pace. I think the Red Bull and Max look more competitive here than they did certainly last week.

"Suzuka is not a completely different layout to somewhere like here with a lot of high-speed corners, so it kind of makes sense to me at least that they're a bit more competitive, and we'll see if that translates to the race tomorrow. I'm feeling confident in what we've got. There's a lot of DRS zones around here, which is a nice difference to Suzuka. So, yeah, let's see if we can make some progress," said the Australian.