Pace-setter Piastri expects field ‘to find a big step overnight’

Despite having set the pace in FP2, Oscar Piastri says the competitive order at the Australian Grand Prix could change with big gains being made overnight.

McLaren won the constructors’ championship last season, with Lando Norris taking the drivers’ title, but after pre-season has not been talked up by its rivals to the same extent as Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull. Yet it was Piastri who set the fastest time of Friday practice to lead Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli by 0.214s, after his opening session had been impacted by power unit calibration issues.

“FP2, certainly on my side, went a lot smoother than FP1,” Piastri said. “I think there's just so many things to get to grips with. It's very different to what we had last year. I think FP2, as a session, was pretty smooth. I was able to build some consistency and start learning properly, which was good.

“We'll try and see what we've learned today. I think everyone's going to find a big step overnight. I think we need to try and do the same.”

The single-lap pace is still not enough for Piastri to feel confident that he will be fighting for pole position on Saturday, despite racing expectations in front of his home crowd.

“The front few rows, hopefully. Whether it's pole or not, I don't know," he said. "I've not seen what our race pace or our long-run pace looked like. I'm not sure it was as good as some others around us, but I think we looked OK. I think the biggest thing at the moment is just trying to build consistency, make things operate the way they should. And in FP2, I feel like we were able to get closer to doing that.”

Ferrari had been quickest in FP1 with Charles Leclerc setting the pace, but the Monaco native believes Mercedes started to show itself to be a step ahead of the field when it came to race simulations.

“FP1 was good,” Leclerc said. “FP2 was… I think Mercedes is slowly showing a bit more of what they have and FP2 we are starting to see where we are lacking compared to them. I think they are clearly very strong, especially in terms of race pace.

“I don't know how much margin they still have on qualifying pace but in the race pace they seem to be very strong compared to us. A lot of work to do but I don't really focus on that – we've got plenty of things to improve on our car. In FP2 I tried something quite aggressive which didn't work out, so I'll be back tomorrow into a more reasonable window and we'll see how it looks like.”

Leclerc admitted Piastri’s lap caught the eye but highlighted how tough it is to get a read on what each team is showing performance-wise at this early stage of the season.

“Race pace [Mercedes] were very very impressive and in terms of qualifying pace again it's difficult to know how much more there is to come," he said. Oscar did a very impressive lap but I don't know also what they are doing between the cars – maybe they might be testing different things between the cars, because Lando was quite far back.

“Again, it’s the first race of a completely new car, so lots of question marks but on the long run I would say you have a bit of a better picture of what's going on in the performance of everybody so far. I hope I'm wrong and that we are much faster tomorrow but at the moment it seems to be Mercedes a step ahead and then Red Bull, McLaren and ourselves after.”