Piastri baffled by “mystery” lack of pace in F1 Mexico GP qualifying

Oscar Piastri will start the 2025 Mexico City GP from seventh rather than eighth on the grid, thanks to Carlos Sainz’s five-place penalty, but that will be of little comfort given that the Formula 1 championship leader’s fastest Q3 lap was 0.588s off McLaren team-mate Lando Norris.

Piastri has been unable to explain the deficit he has carried to Norris all through the weekend, though team principal Andrea Stella described it as “milliseconds in every corner”.

Max Verstappen also had a disappointing qualifying session by his standards but will still start two places ahead of Piastri at a circuit which is notorious for two things: carambolage at the first corner and the overall difficulty of overtaking.

“The gap was big in that session and it's been big all weekend,” Piastri said after qualifying.

“There's been some things where I felt like I can tidy it up and make some easy progress, but not all of it. And I think in qualifying, I feel like I did a reasonable job and the car felt reasonable as well. So, yeah, the lack of lap time is a bit of a mystery.”

On Thursday, before taking to the track, Piastri had expressed confidence that the struggles he had encountered in the US GP – where he was also outpaced by Norris – were specific to the Circuit of The Americas. Asked by Motorsport.com whether the issues he was facing here were actually different from the previous weekend in Austin, he was equivocal.

“In some ways, not too dissimilar,” he said.

“I think what's been a bit surprising here has just been that the gap [to Norris] has been the same pretty much every session. I feel like I've done some decent laps through the weekend, but everything seems to be about four or five tenths off.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images

“So that's obviously not a great sign. But some of the things that were difficult in Austin are also proving difficult here.”

Piastri had made rather heavy weather of getting through to Q3 in the first place. Dramatic track evolution through Q1 had pushed most of the field to do an extra run on new softs, so Piastri had to essay his first Q2 run on previously used ones. That lap was only good enough for P10, clearly unsafe given that lap times were still dropping, so he had to nail it on his next push lap.

Even then he was P7, and just 0.079s faster than Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda, the first driver not to make the cut for Q3 in P11.

“I think from Austin there were some things that were clear,” Piastri said.

“But even those things that were clear were a bit unusual, some of the differences. Again, this weekend it's been a bit different.

“I've not changed really how I'm driving since the start of the season and even a few races ago when things were going really well. So it's difficult to pinpoint where the lap time's been lacking this weekend.

“But I'm sure we'll find it.”