Piastri annoyed at 'mistakes' that cost him Abu Dhabi front row

Oscar Piastri believes he could have achieved a front row start if he did not make as many mistakes in qualifying for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

The McLaren driver secured P3 having set a lap time that was 0.337s slower than pole-sitter Max Verstappen, but is under investigation along with Pierre Gasly for impeding.

The stewards will also take a look at his adherence to the maximum delta time, although a driver usually gets dispensation if they have moved out of the way for traffic.

Piastri felt that he was making a lot of mistakes, which held him back from producing his best lap time in qualifying as he out-qualified team-mate Lando Norris.

"It's extremely tight this weekend, it's been a bit of a messy one. The pace has been there, just a lot of mistakes and on last lap I made a little bit of a mistake," said Piastri.

"It would have been one last corner to get to the front, so happy with that the car is very quick this weekend compared to Vegas."

Piastri: I hadn't done a clean lap all weekend

Piastri has not looked as quick as Norris throughout the weekend, as he struggled to put together a clean lap.

Norris was on course for out-qualifying him for the 16th time this season, but the Briton made a mistake on his lap in the last sector.

The mistake caused him to drop back to those who improved, including Piastri, George Russell, and Charles Leclerc. The Australian felt it was a lucky break, having not been able to put together a clean lap time in the heavily disrupted practice sessions.

"In practice the pace was there, just there was a couple of big mistakes in every lap," said Piastri.

"I went into qualifying and I hadn't done a clean lap all weekend, so made life a bit more difficult for myself.

"Q1 messy, Q2 got it together finally and it was pretty good in Q3."