Oscar Piastri’s Baku Friday was the sort drivers file under “character building.” Quick enough to hint at the real thing, ragged enough to leave him and McLaren with a long list for the overnight shift.
On the timesheets, FP1 flattered to deceive. McLaren locked out the top spots early, Piastri tucked in just behind Lando Norris, but the headline masked a scrappy hour. The Australian spent a chunk of it parked in the garage dealing with a power unit gremlin while red flags chopped up everyone’s plans. When he did run, the car looked lively — fast on the straights, edgy on the brakes — but there wasn’t much rhythm to be found.
FP2 turned spikier. Norris brushed the wall at Turn 4 and bent the suspension, ending his day early. Piastri then kissed the concrete himself, scuffing the Pirelli logos off the right-hand sidewalls and junking another run plan. He also visited the stewards for an alleged yellow-flag infringement and left with a reprimand — no grid pain, but more time lost. By the flag he was only 12th, a couple of spots behind his teammate.
“A bit tricky, yeah,” Piastri shrugged afterward. “Up and down. I think the pace is there; it’s just not the easiest to get the most out of it at the moment.” He pointed to setup swings in FP2 and the usual Baku complications — traffic, tows, flags — as the main culprits. “We tried a few things… I’m sure we’ll look back and see what we can change for tomorrow. Tyre choices will make it a bit different as well. There’s still a lot of positives, just a few tricky moments.”
It’s classic Baku: the circuit’s stop–start rhythm and cruel walls punish anyone out of sequence. Miss a prep lap, catch a yellow flag, and the whole programme gets shuffled. McLaren were trying to thread the needle between low-fuel bite and long-run consistency, and every interruption turned correlation into guesswork.
The raw speed, though, is there — and that’s the bit Piastri kept circling back to. The MCL-whatever-it’s-called-this-week has been a reference on Sundays more often than not, and if McLaren tidy the edges, they’ll be back on the sharp end when it counts. The car’s straight-line punch suits Baku’s two long blasts, and the drivers have been ruthlessly good at living with a pointy front end when the wind picks up around the old city walls.
Qualifying will be its own street fight. The tow game on the final straight is worth a handful of tenths but can blow up a lap if mistimed; expect radio bickering, pit exit chess and a few abandoned flyers. And with everyone still juggling tyre allocations, there’s scope for someone to get cute and find track position the hard way.
Big picture, the stakes are obvious. McLaren are knee-deep in both championship fights this season, and Baku — with its appetite for chaos and safety cars — tends to tilt title momentum one way or the other. Piastri and Norris have been trading weekends, and while Friday won’t go on any highlight reels, it rarely decides anything here.
So yes, it was scruffy. A wall brush, a mechanical hiccup, a reprimand and a middling P12. But if there’s a team in the current paddock that can turn a messy Friday into a meaningful Saturday, it’s the one in papaya. Piastri knows it too. The speed exists; it just needs unearthing without pinging another wall. In Baku, that’s the whole game.
