McLaren’s Oscar Piastri is gunning for victory after taking the Formula 1 Sprint pole for the Sao Paulo Grand Prix at Interlagos.
Piastri’s McLaren team-mate Lando Norris looked odds on to take pole in Friday’s Sprint Qualifying session, before the Aussie snatched it away right at the death.
Bettering Norris by 0.029s, Piastri has put himself in the best possible position to take victory in Saturday’s Sprint race.
Shortly after jumping out of his McLaren in parc ferme, Piastri revealed how a resurfaced, yet bumpy Interlagos circuit made taking pole a tough ask.
“Yeah, it was a tricky session, I felt pretty comfortable at the start and then the grip was really coming up a lot through the session,” Piastri explained.
“I mean with the track this year it’s hard enough to see where you’re going, let alone trying to do a fast lap.
“So it’s challenging out there but I’m happy to have qualified on pole for the Sprint.”
Piastri knew there was room to ‘improve’ en route to Brazil Sprint pole
McLaren was the first team to send its cars out to the track in the SQ3 top-10 shootout, with Piastri coming out of the pits ahead of Norris.
An initial 1:09.225s effort was bettered by Norris who pushed the benchmark to 1:08.928s.
That left Piastri knowing there was time on the table before he punched in his pole time.
“My first lap didn’t feel amazing and I knew that there were a few places to improve,” Piastri explained.
“The second lap was good and the tyres hung on so I’m very, very happy and yeah, excited to be starting off P1.”
Regardless of Norris having a title fight with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, Piastri is gunning to beat his McLaren team-mate from lights out in Saturday’s Sprint.
“I’ll try and win, obviously that’s the first thing,” he said.
“We’ll see, you know it’s going to be a very different kind of Sprint to last year I think with the resurfacing so we’ll see what the temperature does, what the weather does but starting from the best [place], I’ll try and make sure it stays that way.”
READ MORE – Oscar Piastri snatches Sprint pole from McLaren team-mate Lando Norris in Brazil
