Oscar Piastri out-qualified team mate Lando Norris despite choosing not to use the new suspension design McLaren brought to this weekend’s race.
The revision to the front suspension of the team’s MCL39 is one of three new parts McLaren introduced this weekend. But only Norris opted to run it in qualifying.
Piastri said the suspension changes do not offer a clear improvement over the previous design. “I’m obviously not going to get into too much detail on it, but I could have run it if I wanted to, and I didn’t,” he explained.
“It changes some things – some things are better, some things are worse. It’s not [that] simple: it’s not an ‘upgrade’, it’s a different part.
“So I had the option to run it but chose not to. I’ve been happy with how the car’s been so far this year and, again, just wanted to keep consistency.”
Norris has not been as happy as Piastri with the car’s handling. Despite using the new suspension layout he made mistakes during Q3 and took seventh on the grid, four places behind his team mate.
Piastri said the team has had a harder time in general so far at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
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“We have struggled so far this weekend,” he said. “In qualifying, we found our feet a bit more, and it became a little bit more normal. But apart from maybe one or two races in qualifying, it’s been very close a lot of the time.”
He said the cooler conditions suited some of their rivals better, notably Mercedes, who took pole position with George Russell.
“It’s a track where they’ve been strong in the past,” said Piastri after qualifying. “The conditions maybe suited them more. There’s a thousand reasons it could be.
“But yesterday, we were on the back foot. Even this morning for myself in particular, I was not particularly happy.
“In qualifying, I think it’s just the kind of normal battle. That’s a bit of the price you pay for not being on top of things from the start. You miss that extra half a tenth maybe, and that can be the difference. That’s more or less what it was today.
“Obviously the gap was bigger than that, but again, with some other factors in there, I think we were in the mix but paid the price for a slightly messy weekend.”
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