Oscar Piastri wins over F1 fans with sense of humour as he and Lando Norris lock out front row of grid at Hungarian Grand Prix
- Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri qualified first and second
- McLaren achieved first front row lockout since 2012
- Piastri becomes fan favorite with sense of humor
McLaren’s Australian driver Oscar Piastri has vowed to put his personal ambitions ahead of the team’s priorities after a remarkable front-row start at Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
Piastri will start alongside his English-born team-mate Lando Norris, who is on pole after the British team dominated Saturday’s qualifying session.
“Of course, if I miss by two hundredths you think of all the little things you can do a little bit better, but it’s a great result for the team,” said Piastri, before adding that the main objective is to keep the two papaya-coloured cars at the front until the finish of the race.
“Of course I want to be in the lead, but we have both cars on the front row and we are trying to win this championship as a team. We will be smart about that,” said the Australian.
“We want to keep it one-two and we’re going to fight it out amongst ourselves to see who gets one.”
Piastri is fifth in the drivers’ standings with 124 points, while number two Norris has 171. Max Verstappen has a comfortable lead of 255. Piastri has not yet won a Grand Prix, but he did come second in Canada and Austria this year.
Piastri has become an increasingly popular crowd pleaser thanks to his dry sense of humour, which was again evident during qualifying.
The Australian was given the task of slowing down the field at the end of the final qualifying session in order to protect his team-mate’s position.
Oscar Piastri (pictured) becomes a fan favorite for his dry sense of humor
“The priority here is to avoid sporting infringements or penalties, which means not hindering cars too much at the pit exit,” said the Piastri engineer.
Piastri’s response was a silent raise of his eyebrows, which has since gone viral.
Piastri also provided fans with a laugh when he was asked on the radio whether it was Daniel Ricciardo or Yuki Tsunoda trying to get onto the track behind him.
“I think Tsunoda is missing a few wheels,” he said dryly.
“So I don’t think he’ll do many laps.”
“Ah yes,” the wells replied. “That is fair.”
After the race, he praised the achievement of being part of the first McLaren pairing to take the front row of the grid in Brazil since 2012. “It’s the first one-two in qualifying for McLaren in a long time, so I’m very happy,” he said.
Referring to the difficult second practice session on Friday, in which he finished 13th in the standings, Piastri added: ‘Yesterday was a difficult day for me, so it’s nice to come back.’