Oscar Piastri reveals 'surprise' McLaren reaction to huge George Russell deficit

Oscar Piastri has expressed his and McLaren's surprise at the scale of the deficit to Mercedes' George Russell in Singapore Grand Prix qualifying.

The championship leader will start third at Marina Bay, ahead of title rival Lando Norris in fifth, with the McLaren expected to dominate at the circuit, but the expected pace has not materialised.

Russell roared to pole 0.182s faster than Max Verstappen in second, with Piastri 0.366s behind the Briton, whose Mercedes has not fared well in the hot, humid, and bumpy conditions of Singapore across the season. 

Given this, Piastri explained his shock at the scale of the deficit, although he did try to reduce the impact of it, given McLaren's recent minor downturn.

"I think my first lap of Q3 felt reasonable, it certainly didn't feel four-tenths-off-bad," Piastri told media, including RacingNews365. 

"So I just don't think we had the pace, which is a little bit of a surprise for us. It has been very tight throughout practice, but I think we were relatively confident going in. 

"There are some things to look at and see where we're lacking, but we've not had the easiest last couple of weekends, so it's not a huge surprise in some ways because of how it's gone recently, but I do think we felt after practice we had a better chance.
 
"It's very tough to overtake around here; you need a fair bit of extra pace to get past someone, so we'll see if we've got that.

"But the long running has been kind of tough for everyone with red flags, and no one's really done that much, so I wouldn't say we've got more confidence than we had going into qualifying for the race, but we'll see what's possible."