Piastri jokes about Mercedes gap ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix

Oscar Piastri joked about the scale of the gap separating him from Mercedes ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix: to hope to fight for victory in Baku, the McLaren driver said he would need “a tow bar” to hook onto George Russell’s car.

After a difficult build-up to the decisive sessions, the Australian still secured third on the grid and said he was pleased with the result. He was only 0.001s behind Charles Leclerc in Q3, but his deficit to Russell was 0.838s. In those circumstances, Piastri believes it is unrealistic to expect to go much further in the race.

Asked whether he could challenge the Briton, he replied with humour: “If he’s got a tow bar that I can hook onto the back of, maybe. But yeah, we’ll see what we can do.”

Mercedes showed such an advantage that it is easy to think Kimi Antonelli might have joined his team-mate on the front row without his Q1 crash. At a circuit where overtaking is relatively accessible, it is not out of the question that Antonelli could still threaten Piastri in the race.

McLaren also did not look particularly impressive in practice. That may suggest the papaya cars will have to defend rather than attack on race day. Piastri acknowledged a difficult weekend for the Woking team, even if qualifying produced a somewhat unexpected outcome.

The driver had not finished higher than sixth in any practice session before briefly topping Q3. He does not consider that picture truly representative at a track that does not particularly suit this season’s McLaren. His Friday was also disrupted by a brake issue, which led the team to use cable ties to fasten certain parts and limit vibrations without losing track time.

“It’s certainly not been an easy weekend, from several areas,” Piastri said. “We haven’t been particularly quick. We were also running cable ties on our car through Friday, which is never a great sign. So it’s been a little bit tricky for us.” He added: “I was pretty surprised to see us first and second after the first lap of Q3, but unfortunately, we had no hope against George.”

Piastri said McLaren found more pace in qualifying, as has already happened to the team this season after practice sessions in which it appeared to be on the back foot. He nevertheless believes the race pace seen the previous day was quite good: “The Mercedes look incredibly quick here, but everyone else looks like they’re in a fairly similar group. I think we can hang on and battle in the pack behind George, and then see what lap Kimi starts coming through as well.”

The Australian believes McLaren can fight the other teams on Saturday. His team-mate Lando Norris will start fifth on the grid.