Oscar Piastri reflects on ‘frustrating’ Sprint at Spa as Lando Norris admits McLaren will ‘reassess’ before Qualifying

Oscar Piastri conceded that it was “a bit frustrating” to not be able to overtake Max Verstappen during the Sprint at the Belgian Grand Prix, while McLaren team mate Lando Norris admitted that the team may need to “reassess” prior to Qualifying later on Saturday.

Despite initially holding onto the lead at the start of the event, Piastri lost the position to Verstappen later in the lap as the Dutchman surged past on the Kemmel Straight – and from there onwards the Australian was unable to retake P1, despite trying to chase down the Red Bull.

Asked afterwards if Lap 1 had played out as he expected, Piastri responded: “Pretty much, yeah. I tried my best to snake my way through the straights and not give too much of a tow, but I just didn’t have enough straight-line speed, and then obviously, I didn’t have enough straight-line speed for the next 15 laps either.

“Still a good result, still good points. It is only the Sprint and the main points are tomorrow. I’m pretty happy with it, just obviously a bit frustrating that I couldn’t get past.”

Pushed on whether the team may trim some downforce from the car ahead of Sunday’s Grand Prix to prevent the same scenario from happening again, Piastri said: “It’s a great question.

“The weather is looking pretty bad tomorrow, which obviously means you don’t want to take off too much wing, but I don’t really want to repeat the Sprint we’ve just had. We’ll have a look and see what we can do, but there are a lot of things to look into before tomorrow.”

Despite being left disappointed by his result in the Sprint, Piastri is remaining optimistic about Qualifying later on Saturday.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he explained. “Spa is my favourite track of the year, and especially in Qualifying, it’s just mega around here. I’m looking forward to some more laps in anger.”

Behind him, Piastri’s team mate Norris had to settle for third place. After being overtaken by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc on Lap 1, the Briton later retook the place and tried to chase down Verstappen and Piastri up ahead. However, like Piastri, Norris was unable to make a move.

“[It was] a bit of fun at the start with trying to overtake Charles,” Norris reflected after the Sprint. “Maybe I could have positioned myself a little bit better, but otherwise, it was a bit too difficult to get past Max.

“Max drove a good race and I wasn’t going to get past anyone unless Oscar got past Max. They drove good races. Not a lot we could do on a day like today, so I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

“Obviously, I hoped for a bit of battling or something, but the Red Bull was too quick in the straight for us to catch up. Maybe some tweaks for us to make into Qualifying. I don’t know, but we’ll reassess and see what we can do.”

Norris arrives into the weekend off the back of two consecutive victories in Austria and Great Britain and is still aiming to make it a hat-trick of wins on Sunday at Spa-Francorchamps.

“That’s the plan,” the 25-year-old said. “I’m not too fussed about Sprint races, but obviously, the main race, I prefer to win. We’ll see.

“I wasn’t too bad yesterday. I was still comfortable, it’s just a couple of things didn’t go my way, but I’m still confident that we can have a good result later and finish with some good Quali laps.”