‘Nice to be closer’ to Mercedes after Japanese GP qualifying P3 - Piastri

Oscar Piastri says McLaren is getting closer to Mercedes after securing third on the grid in qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix.

Mercedes has locked out the front row at each of the first three races this season, with Suzuka seeing Kimi Antonelli beat George Russell by nearly 0.3s. Piastri was third to give McLaren its best result of the season so far, and with the gap to Russell standing at just 0.056s he says progress is being made towards the frontrunners.

“I think qualifying has been OK this year, but nice to get into the top three,” Piastri said. “I think this weekend we’ve looked good, and I think we’ve executed well. We clearly don’t have the pace or the grip to match Mercedes still, but we’re getting closer, which is the most important point.”

Expanding on the deficit to Mercedes, Piastri believes there are aspects of the performance gap that actually doesn’t have a major impact on overall lap time, but shows there is still some way to go to catch the leaders.

“It’s nice to be closer, obviously,” he said. “I think we’re learning more and more about the car and about the power unit every weekend. I think this weekend in Suzuka, let’s say being slower in the Esses than Mercedes is not necessarily a bad thing, which is weird to say. But I think we were saved a little bit by that. So, I think we’ve been more competitive in general, but we’re under no illusion, we’ve still got a pretty big gap to fill.”

Piastri is hoping to start his first grand prix of the season having crashed on the way to the grid in Australia and then suffered a power unit issue in China, but he hopes he isn’t on the back foot compared to his rivals in race trim.

“Not necessarily, but you don’t know what you don’t know until you’re in the situation,” Piastri said. “I’ve tried to learn as much as I can from watching the races and even through practice. There have been some interesting moments with cars at different speeds in different parts of the track. I overtook someone into Degner 1 yesterday, which was different.

“But you’re learning all the time and I think just the level of awareness you need is very high. But I think ultimately pace is going to be the thing that decides your result, and the start as well. Well, maybe not the start if it’s these guys [Mercedes] around you, but we’ll see what we can do.”