Piastri reveals he was "tempted" to abandon his pole-winning lap

Piastri reveals he was “tempted” to abandon his pole-winning lap

Oscar Piastri revealed he almost abandoned his lap which secured pole position for the Chinese Grand Prix and broke the track record for the Shanghai International Circuit.

The McLaren driver moved to the top of the times with his first lap in Q3, which was a 1’30.703. Although this turned out to be quick enough for pole position, that didn’t become clear until after the final runs were completed.

Piastri’s second lap was fractionally slower than his first to begin with. He lost a hundredth of a second through the first sector and six hundredths more in the second.

Drivers receive instantaneous lap time updates on their steering wheels, and Piastri said his showed he was even further down on his best effort as he neared the end of his second lap. He therefore decided to attack the turn 14 hairpin near the end of the lap.

“My first lap was honestly better than my second,” he said, “but just at the hairpin at the end of the straight I lost a bit of time.

“Then on the second lap I was about two tenths down on myself, so I kind of just went, ‘Why not send it into the hairpin?’ And I gained those two tenths back and then found a little bit more in the last corner.

“Honestly, without that, I was tempted to box before that. So I’m pretty happy now that I didn’t.”

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Having qualified third for the sprint race yesterday, Piastri believes McLaren delivered on their potential today because they got their tactics right in qualifying.

“Our car was fast yesterday, it was just the run plan we went for in sprint qualifying I don’t think was the best one in the end,” he said. “I think today we knew that the session’s obviously a little bit longer so you can do two proper runs. So I think there were just a few things that in hindsight we could have done differently.

“Today I think the pace in the car has been more or less the same, we just executed it the way we should have. It’s been a good day overall.”

Although he has previously started sprint races from pole position, Piastri said achieving the same for a grand prix means more to him.

“It means a lot. I’ve been close a few times now and it’s nice to finally have my first pole. I’ve had a couple of sprint [race] poles, but to have the first grand prix pole means a bit more.

“I’m pretty pumped, to be honest. I’ve worked hard for it and I feel like the start of the season has been strong. Obviously the result in Melbourne was a shame, but I feel like I’ve been doing a good job otherwise and I’m just happy to have ended up on pole.”

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