Piastri defends weakness despite 'difficult' admission

Oscar Piastri has sought to better contextualise his qualifying deficit to Lando Norris, after being roundly beaten in their head-to-head record.

Although he admits to not being "particularly happy" with his grid-setting form, something he feels has made weekends "more difficult" than required, Piastri maintains the gap to the British driver is "very small".

Nonetheless, the 23-year-old fell to his McLaren team-mate 20-4 in main qualifying sessions across the 2024 F1 season, one of the larger disparities on the grid.

Norris was, however, particularly strong over one lap last season, securing eight pole positions - matching that of drivers' champion Max Verstappen.

"A lot of the time the gap has been very small," Piastri pointed out to media including RacingNews365 when the deficit was highlighted to him. "I've just always been on the wrong side of that gap.

"There have been races where the gap has been bigger than I wanted, for sure. I prefer the gap to be the opposite direction, but I think it's been very, very tight for a lot of it.

"I've not been particularly happy with my qualifying this season. I've made a lot of weekends more difficult than I wanted to, because of where I qualified."

Piastri was quick to underline the areas of progress he made last season, compared with his rookie year in 2023.

In doing so, he argued that bringing those components together will be the key to elevating his performance next term, despite not taking the desired steps in qualifying.

"The big positive has been that last year, it probably would have been that where I started would be where I finished," the Australian stated. "And there's been a lot of races this year where I've actually been able to make progress forward.

"So, I feel like I've maybe not taken the steps I wanted to in qualifying, but definitely other steps in my roundness as a driver.

"It's just kind of putting them all together now is the big thing, and if I can do that, then hopefully there's some more success to come."