Piastri searching for answers after six‑tenths qualifying swing to Norris in Mexico
Oscar Piastri walked out of qualifying in Mexico City scratching his head, seventh on the grid and six tenths adrift of the guy in the other orange car. That guy, of course, is Lando Norris, who stuck it on pole. The title fight is tight, the margins usually tighter — but not today. Not by a long way.
From the first laps on Friday to the last flyer in Q3, Piastri never looked fully plugged into the MCL39. He’d been hovering four to five tenths off Norris “pretty much every session,” and when the crunch came, the final split read 0.588s. In a McLaren camp that’s been separated by millimetres all season, that’s a chasm.
“Everything feels normal, but the gap was big in that session. Has been big all weekend,” Piastri said. “I felt 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.”
It’s not the kind of mystery you want when you’re leading the World Championship and starting behind both your closest rival and a certain triple champion. Norris has the prime spot; Max Verstappen lines up fifth; Piastri will launch from row four with work to do and a very long straight to Turn 1 to make some of it back.
POLE in Mexico City!
Lando sticks the MCL39 on P1 for Sunday. Vamos. 🇲🇽🧡
— McLaren (@McLarenF1)October 25, 2025
The Australian dismissed any obvious hangover from last weekend’s tangle with Norris in Austin. “Difficult to know,” he shrugged when asked if anything might be amiss. “Everything feels normal… There’s been some things where I felt like I can tidy it up and make some easy progress, but not all of it.”
If Austin was put down as a circuit quirk, Mexico isn’t offering him a clean reset. “In some ways, not too dissimilar,” he admitted. “I’ve done some decent laps through the weekend, but everything seems to be about four or five tenths off. That’s obviously not a great sign.”
The most telling line? He hasn’t changed much on his side. “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,” he said. “I haven’t seen the data, but I’m expecting it to be losing a little bit everywhere. There wasn’t any big moments or corners where I felt I did something massively wrong. That’s been a bit of the story of the weekend.”
So the homework box is overflowing at McLaren tonight: correlate Piastri’s car with Norris’s, sift the balance comments that say “feels OK” against the stopwatch that doesn’t. It’s the sort of gap that makes engineers reach for ride heights and aero maps, and drivers reach for patience.
The mood, understandably, was one of quiet frustration. “Being that far off when you feel like you’ve done a reasonable job is a difficult place to be,” he said. That’s the part that bites a competitor: when your reference lap feels tidy and the delta says otherwise.
The good news for Piastri is that Mexico rewards bold starts. The run to Turn 1 is the longest of the year, a tow-fest that can reorder the top eight in the blink of an eye. If he nails the launch and finds a slipstream, there’s a route back towards the front — and towards Norris. But he knows the real recovery lies in unlocking the missing pace rather than relying on heroics down the main straight.
“I’ll try my best. It’s the longest run of the year, so I’ll try and make up some spots there,” Piastri said. “If I can unlock the pace in the car, then we can have some fun. Just got to try and unlock it.”
Tough quali. Not where we wanted to be but we’ll fight tomorrow. Big run to T1 — let’s see what we can do. 🇲🇽
— Oscar Piastri (@OscarPiastri)October 25, 2025
Sunday, then, doubles as damage limitation and a litmus test. If McLaren can trace the six‑tenths gap, Piastri’s championship hand stays strong. If not, Norris’s pole could be more than a statement — it could be a turning point. The paddock knows how quickly momentum flips in title fights. Piastri’s job now is to make sure this one doesn’t.
