Close, but no cigar.
This might not have been the actual phrase going through Oscar Piastri’s head, and that of his race engineer Tom Stallard, after Piastri’s first Q3 lap, but the sentiments will have been the same.
That lap – 1m27.560s – was actually fractionally slower than his final Q2 lap (1m27.545s) and therefore highly likely to be beaten by Max Verstappen, who had been fastest of all in Q1 and right up there with the McLarens in Q2.
Piastri’s team-mate Lando Norris would also have been a candidate – had he not fractionally misjudged his entry speed into Turn 4, just before the Aussie crossed the finish line, and skittered across the Turn 5 kerb, then into the barriers.
The ensuing red flag left Piastri performing a solo routine atop the timesheets and forced the majority of the other Q3 graduates to abort their own push laps or bail out before starting one.
Thoughts then turned to how to maximise the remaining time available on the clock: 8m32s. A highly compressed timeframe for those hoping to complete the standard Q3 programme of two separate low-fuel runs, requiring a period in the garage for refuelling.
Verstappen’s long-time race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase made the call: fuel the world champion’s RB21 for two push laps, complete the first on the softs only lightly scrubbed in, then make a ‘racing’ stop for the remaining set of new softs.
This would enable Verstappen to build towards peak performance on a complicated track which rewards this approach, and in a car which is notoriously unpredictable under duress.
His first lap would be a ‘feeler’, the second the big push. Over on the McLaren pitwall this approach was evaluated and discounted.
“I had a lap on the board, I obviously didn't need to put another one on there,” said Piastri.
“And it [the time remaining] was going to be extremely tight. As Max said, he had to fuel for the whole run. So that first lap on used tyres with a bit more fuel, you're kind of weighing up how much you're learning and how much actually is it going to put you off?
“I think when you don't have a lap on the board, it's a very different scenario. But for us with a lap on the board, we've done like three or four new sets [of tyres] in a row – so, yeah, we decided to just go for that single lap at the end. And I think for us it was the right decision.”
If we compare the data between Piastri’s final Q2 lap and his first Q3 lap, both set on new softs, we can get an insight into McLaren’s thinking. In his first Q3 lap he is fractionally slower at the apex of Turn 2 and ships 0.071s compared with that last Q2 lap. But he immediately recovers that and more by carrying more speed through Turn 4, by which time he is 0.126s ahead.
Unfortunately, though, this compromises his exit and he is behind again by Turn 9 – and 0.125s down by Turn 13 despite a slight recovery in between. For the remainder, the two laps are nearly identical – right up to the final corner where, on his final Q3 lap, Piastri is a little too ambitious.
For a fraction of a second Piastri is travelling 30kmh faster than his previous lap but, again, this compromises his exit. He is forced to pick the throttle up slightly later and hold third gear for slightly longer.
So you can see why Piastri would have felt a better lap could be found by tidying up small details, and why he and the team agreed that going out on the same tyres but with a heavier fuel load wasn’t worth the attendant risks.
The car would have been slightly more pendulous and reluctant to change direction through those areas where he had been losing through that first Q3 lap – and on tyres which had already given their best.
Verstappen’s mighty first sector
After Verstappen completed the first of his two Q3 laps – the one on scrubbed but not pushed softs – he was 0.001s faster than Piastri’s first run and on provisional pole. Tellingly, at this point he radioed Lambiase to bemoan the low grip he’d had in Turn 1.
He was assured this was because he hadn’t quite ‘introduced’ the tyres properly and they weren’t at their peak when he arrived there on his push lap. Piastri subsequently posted a 1m27.304s lap which returned Verstappen to P2.
As we can see in the data, when the Red Bull driver put on his new set of tyres, he inflicted the greatest amount of damage on Piastri’s fastest lap in the Turns 1-2 complex. He is travelling 10kmh faster on the main straight on the run to the corner (possibly a factor of engine modes since the data indicates he is running 300 or so RPM higher, but he also picked up a tow from teammate Yuki Tsunoda). He already has 0.222s in hand over Piastri as he picks up the throttle at the exit.
On the run to Turns 4 and 5 Piastri erodes some of that margin – possibly a result of aero or the Mercedes PU’s delivery – but Verstappen is briefly 20kmh faster through the slowest point of this complex and the margin expands again.
It’s nip-and-tuck through the rest of the lap as Piastri recovers some ground, and they are just 0.056s apart on the run to the final corner. Piastri is earlier off the throttle and fractionally earlier on the brakes, too, enabling Verstappen to carry a little more speed towards the apex.
He opens the gap to 0.143s but this comes at a cost: at the apex itself he is 6kmh slower and the gap begins to shrink again as they both get on the gas.
From here it’s a question of power delivery and the Mercedes engine in the back of the McLaren does a fractionally better job than the Honda, and the gap narrows to 0.010s as they cross the line.
