Oscar Piastri admits pole position fear after record-breaking Belgian sprint quali run

Oscar Piastri looked truly unstoppable in SQ3 at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps despite a hairy near-miss earlier in qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix Sprint race.

His final lap was good enough to set a new track lap record — but Piastri has confessed that he’s not sure pole position is the best place to start the race!

Oscar Piastri snags pole at “worst place” for it!

It was a roller coaster ride of a sprint qualifying session for championship leader Oscar Piastri ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix.

He topped SQ1 by a margin of +0.274 seconds to second-placed Max Verstappen, but SQ2 proved to be a significant challenge.

Both McLaren drivers headed out to set a flying lap before the rest of the field — and that proved to be a very smart call, because Piastri cut the course at Turn 4 and had his first lap time deleted.

He was able to make a second run before the checkered flag fell on the session, but he finished the session all the way down in 10th place, just 0.041 seconds away from being knocked out.

Yet Piastri rallied for SQ3, where he snatched a dominant — and record-breaking — pole position.

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Speaking to Lawrence Barretto of F1TV after qualifying, it was clear that the Australian driver was pleased with his performance, as he was all smiles approaching the microphone.

“It was a little bit of a scare in SQ2,” he admitted, “but very happy with the lap on softs at the end.

“I feel like I got it mostly together. I certainly pushed the limits and maybe overstepped it in a couple of places, but it was a good lap. Nice end to the day.”

It may be something of an understatement on Piastri’s part, because that “nice end to the day” means he’s just set the new track record at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps with a time of 1:40.510, roundly beating Lewis Hamilton’s former record from 2020 (1:41.252).

More than that, he out-qualified second-placed Max Verstappen by more than four-tenths of a second — something that he admitted was a shock.

“I was a bit surprised, yes,” he said when asked about the gap between himself and the competition.

“Sprint qualifying is always really tough because you go onto a different compound at the end, and Spa is a track where you make a mistake in one corner, and there’s normally a massive straight to make you pay for it even more.

“The gap’s normally a little bit bigger around here, but I’ll certainly take it.”

But when he lines up for the start on Saturday, Piastri has admitted that there’s one specific worry on his mind.

“Spa’s probably one of the worst places to have pole position!” the championship leader laughed.

“It is what it is. I think the pace in the car all day’s been really strong, and I’ve felt really confident, so hopefully we can get a good start and try and win the sprint.”

Spa-Francorchamps has played host to the Belgian Grand Prix 57 times in Formula 1’s 75-year history; during that time, the polesitter was able to convert that position to a race victory 27 times. Fascinatingly, the drivers who managed to do so were overwhelming World Champions at some point in their career; Juan Manuel Fangio, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher, Sebastian Vettel, Lewis Hamilton, and Max Verstappen are among them.

The only driver who has taken a pole-to-checkers Belgian GP victory without having taken a World Championship? Charles Leclerc. And because he’s still active, that stat could always change.

If Oscar Piastri could convert his pole to a win, he’ll be in excellent company — though, of course, the sprint nature of the event means he’ll still be chasing the coveted statistic.

Read next: Belgian GP: Piastri survives scare to secure Spa sprint pole as Hamilton hits new low