Oscar Piastri admitted he was dumbfounded at his lack of pace after another difficult qualifying session for the F1 championship leader.
Piastri, who has a 14-point lead over McLaren teammate Lando Norris and 40 points ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, has endured a poor run of form and Saturday at the Mexico GP was no different.
Piastri could only qualify eighth fastest in the final top-10 shootout, though will start seventh due to Carlos Sainz’s five-place grid penalty.
Meanwhile, Norris sealed an impressive pole position with Verstappen only fifth on a terrific day for the Briton, who is now eyeing a big points swing on Sunday.
Asked where he felt the issues were with the car, Piastri was unable to give any clarity, telling Sky Sports: “It all feels OK, just no pace. It’s a bit of a mystery.
“It’s been more or less the same gap all weekend, we’ll have a look where it is going wrong. Obviously a bit frustrating”
Asked to elaborate further on how the car feels different to earlier in the year: “Not a huge amount to be honest, this weekend and last weekend it’s just felt like the pace hasn’t come. Not 100% sure why yet, we’ll do some digging.
“I’ll try my best [at the start], that will be an opportunity to make some progress forwards, so we’ll see what we can do.”
While no clear issue has been identified to explain the gap between the two McLaren drivers in Mexico City, team principal Andrea Stella acknowledged that the Australian is struggling on slippery tracks, such as Mexico and last week in Austin.
“Lando maximised it, but it’s more difficult for Oscar to use the car when the conditions are sliding,” Stella said.
“It’s something we need to review before tomorrow. It’s more him getting the right feeling with these conditions and pushing a little bit more in every corner.
“But that’s difficult without having an issue. I’m sure Oscar will recover some conditions, it’s important for McLaren and important for his championship.”
Max Verstappen, however, implied that Red Bull have taken a backwards step after his recent wins in Monza, Azerbaijan and Austin.
Asked what the issues with the RB21 are, given his fifth-place qualification, the Dutchman replied: “If we would know, we would change it, unfortunately we don’t know, we’ve tried so many things, but it’s not been good.
“It’s not the lack of trying, it’s just not finding it. We tried something again, we didn’t get it quite right, it didn’t allow me to push, I knew from Q1 from the first run that that wasn’t going to be it.
“Basically everything we tried didn’t really work.”
Verstappen then added ahead of the race: “There’s no recovery drive when we have no pace, I need people to retire to finish ahead.
“It’s not suddenly going to change tomorrow.”
Should Norris win the race and Verstappen (fifth) and Piastri (seventh) finish in their current positions, the Briton would lead the world championship by five points with four races left.
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