Oscar Piastri was relived his error in the first qualifying session of the weekend in Austin does not consign him to a poor starting position for the main event.
However he admitted it is “going to be tough” to score any points in Saturday’s sprint race after being eliminated in the first round.
Piastri was a surprise early elimination from sprint qualifying after his best time of the session was deleted for exceeding track limits.
The McLaren driver had been comfortably through to the second phase of sprint qualifying, but ran too wide at the penultimate corner, turn 19, dropping from the top 10 down to 16th place and out of the session.
“Most of the lap was good,” Piastri told the official F1 channel after his elimination. “I made a few mistakes in the last sector and obviously the second-last corner, I just tried to go a bit too fast and this is the result. So it’s a shame, but if there’s one good thing about sprint weekends it’s that we have another shot tomorrow.”
McLaren have been the fastest team in recent rounds but were beaten to sprint pole by Max Verstappen and Red Bull as Piastri’s team mate Lando Norris could only secure fourth on the grid for the sprint race. Despite Norris admitting he had not felt comfortable with his car on Friday, Piastri said his car’s balance “feels okay” heading into the sprint race.
“Maybe not quite as strong as what it has in the last few races, but I don’t think that’s because we’re weaker, I think the others seem a little bit stronger maybe,” Piastri explained. “So let’s see.
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“I’m sure we’re still well and truly in the fight. It’s certainly not a case of we’re miles behind, but it’s maybe a little bit more difficult for us than a few of the other weekends.”
However, Piastri played down his chances of rising from 16th on the grid to the top eight to secure points in the 19-lap race.
“It’s going to be tough, definitely, to get to the points from where we are, but we’ll try,” he said. “We’ll see what we can do.”
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2024 United States Grand Prix
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