Piastri praises McLaren for strategy after taking pole position in ‘very tough’ Imola Qualifying

Oscar Piastri was delighted to grab pole position during an eventful Qualifying session at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, with the Australian crediting his McLaren team with doing a “great job executing it all” after a strategy that saw him avoid dirty air out on track.

It had already been an action-packed Saturday at Imola prior to Q3, the red flags having twice been thrown in Q1 following crashes for Yuki Tsunoda and Franco Colapinto respectively, while there was also a delay to Q2 beginning as the matter of whether Ollie Bearman had made it through before the second stoppage was investigated.

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When the top-10 shootout finally arrived, Max Verstappen initially snatched provisional pole during the first runs, putting Piastri in P2.

But the championship leader bounced back as the final flying laps came in, where – despite facing traffic as one of the first frontrunners to cross the line – he set a time that would prove to be fastest of all via his effort of 1m 14.670s, keeping him three-hundredths clear of Verstappen.

Reflecting on it all after jumping out of the car, Piastri admitted that it had not been the smoothest Qualifying to manage but hailed his team for helping to get the MCL39 into a “nice window”.

“It was a great session, very tough session with all the delays, red flags, and then also the tyres – the tyres were very, very tricky today,” the 24-year-old said. “I think after yesterday everyone thought the C6 [soft tyre] was not too bad, and then today it was a real mystery.

AS IT HAPPENED: Follow the action from Qualifying as Piastri takes pole for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix

“The team did a great job, put the car in a nice window. We’ve been trying a few different things this weekend and we got into a nice place for Qualifying.

“The lap was good, I had about four cars in the last corner which didn’t help but it was enough, so [I’m] very, very happy with the job we’ve done and excited for tomorrow now.”

When asked if he had felt confident of being fast enough to secure pole – given that he was early out on track for the final runs – Piastri responded: “I wasn’t thrilled to be the first car on track but I had quite a big gap in the run before anyway, so it wasn’t actually that much different for me.

“Of course you lose the slipstream by going first, but you don’t have any disturbed air, you don’t have any dirty air. I think that definitely helped out a little bit.

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“That’s what we chose to do, I think we’ve got enough pace to be able to do that and stick to our guns and that’s what we did, so the team did a great job executing it all.”