“Up and down first day” for Piastri in Saudi Arabia

Oscar Piastri described his first day of track action in Saudi Arabia as “up and down”, with the McLaren driver saying the team has “some fine tuning to do” ahead of tomorrow morning’s qualifying session.

“A bit of a tricky day, to be honest,” Piastri said. 

“We’ve looked good at certain points, we’ve looked not so good at certain points, so, a little bit difficult to get a read on where we sit.

“But definitely, we have some improvements to try and make tomorrow.”

Piastri completed 22 laps in the opening practice session of the weekend, ultimately finishing with the 15th fastest time. 

Lando Norris and Piastri found themselves occupying the top two spots at one point in FP1, having demoted Sergio Perez’s opening benchmark early on.

The duo eventually drifted down the order, with Piastri unable to climb his way back up.

Oscar Piastri during FP1 at the Saudi Arabian GP. Image: Mark Sutton / Sutton Images.

Norris found his way in P7, ending the session almost six-tenths behind Max Verstappen in P1.

The #81 had a less-than-ideal final run in the first session, seeing Piastri mounting the kerb at the high-speed Turn 10.

Though dust and sparks were more than visible, the MCL38 came off relatively unscathed, with Piastri’s lap time the only factor impacted.

The young Australian found solace in the fact that his time of 1:30.977s, which was over 1.3 seconds off the benchmark, was set in unrepresentative conditions.

However, when it came to the second session which takes place at the same time as qualifying and the race, he wasn’t as high as he would have liked to be. 

Following a delay to FP2, in which officials checked over the drain covers in the pitlane, Piastri was one of the first drivers to leave his garage.

The McLaren driver stopped at the end of the pitlane, letting his competitors pass as he awaited the moment to complete an opening session practice start. 

From there, Piastri joined the rest of the grid on track, continuing with his run plan despite much of the grid retreating at the 15-minute mark. 

On a flying lap, Piastri looked like his MCL38 had a lot of pace in hand, setting a purple second sector, before bailing and peeling off into the pitlane.  

Oscar Piastri during FP2 at the Saudi Arabian GP. Image: Glenn Dunbar / LAT Images.

Norris reported that his car was “bottoming still”, however, Piastri seemed unaffected by this issue.

With 20 minutes left on the clock, Piastri found himself marginally within the top half of the order in P10, with Norris almost two-tenths back in P12.

Their positions remained the same when the chequered flag was waved, with Yuki Tsunoda managing to split the two papaya cars. 

“It looks pretty tight and pretty mixed in the middle there so, yeah we’ll see what we can do,” Piastri said. 

“[Fernando Alonso’s pace] looks quick, looks very quick.”

The 22-year-old said he isn’t too sure where McLaren stands coming into qualifying tomorrow, saying that they look “ok” ahead of what he expects to be a tight battle. 

“It’s hard to know [where we sit], honestly, we could be right up the front, we could be P10, where we are, it’s just very hard to know. 

“Expecting another close battle tomorrow in [qualifying], and hopefully, we can be more towards the front than where we are now.”

Piastri will find out just where he and his teammate sit come the end of qualifying in Saudi Arabia, which kicks off at 4:00 AM, AEST, tomorrow morning.

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