- Oscar Piastri secured pole for Emilia Romagna Grand Prix
- Aussie almost came unstuck on the last lap of qualifying
In a chaotic qualifying at Imola, Oscar Piastri has remained the model of calm and serenity amid the traffic to roar to pole position again at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix – but he has revealed he almost lost his cool.
Australia’s championship leader pulled out a corker of a lap when under the utmost pressure in his McLaren on Saturday, edging Red Bull’s champion Max Verstappen, while George Russell was third for Mercedes with Piastri’s unhappy teammate Lando Norris fourth.
Yet Piastri really demonstrated the extent of his unruffled excellence at the end of a session which had to be twice red-flagged after Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda and then Alpine’s Franco Colapinto crashed in the first phase.
For his decisive run on Q3 with Verstappen on provisional pole, the Melburnian star had an awkward time, admitting he ‘thought it was going to unravel’ when he approached slower cars towards the end.
Piastri final radio message to his McLaren team conveyed how he really felt.
‘I was going to lose my s*** if that last corner cost me pole,’ he said.
Oscar Piastri has secured pole position for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix
The Aussie had to dodge traffic on the final corners of qualification
‘It wasn’t the easiest session, but nicely done.’
But he still ended up 0.034sec quicker than Verstappen in one minute 14.670 seconds, to earn his third pole of the season, putting him in a great spot to earn a fifth win in seven races — and a fourth in a row — on Sunday to stretch his 16-point lead over Norris.
‘It was a very tough session with all the delays, the red flags,’ said Piastri, who won in China and Bahrain from pole and has shown all season he’s at his unstoppable best when controlling the race from the front.
‘The lap was good. I had about four cars in the last corner, which didn’t help, but it was enough.
‘So, very happy with the job well done and excited for tomorrow.’
It promises to be a big day on the storied circuit where Piastri will be out to equal the four wins in a row the late, great Ayrton Senna achieved in 1991 when he became the last McLaren driver to enjoy such a winning sequence.
Imola, of course, was the circuit where the Brazilian was killed in 1994, with that tragic memory always hanging over the Autodromo di Imola Enzo e Dino Ferrari.
Piastri himself had been alarmed after Tsunoda’s dreadful crash, and was quick to ask after the Japanese Red Bull driver’s wellbeing after the accident that led to a 15-minute delay for track repairs.
Australia’s championship leader pulled out a corker of a lap when under the utmost pressure in his McLaren
Piastri edged Red Bull’s champion Max Verstappen, while George Russell was third for Mercedes
Tsunoda’s car rolled upside down after hitting the barriers, but he was able to walk away and was checked out at the medical centre before returning to the paddock.
Colapinto, who was returning to the grid in place of dropped Australian Jack Doohan, also went to the medical centre on a dismal return to F1. He qualified 15th, but was later dropped one place for an unrelated pit lane infringement.
McLaren’s Norris was again unhappy with his own display, sighing: ‘I made a lot of mistakes. Never good enough in my final lap in quali, everyone goes quicker and I go slower.’
But he wasn’t as unhappy as fellow Briton Lewis Hamilton, as Ferrari suffered a new low in front of their home fans, the seven-time world champ qualifying 12th and Charles Leclerc 11th.
‘Definitely devastated and gutted,’ was Hamilton’s assessment of his first grand prix in Italy with Ferrari.
