Piastri On Red Bull Hiding Their Real Pace: 'We Will See How Many Sandbags Come Out Tomorrow'
F1Friday, 01 March 2024 at 12:00
Oscar Piastri suggested after the end of the FP2 at the Bahrain International Circuit that Red Bull might be hiding a lot of pace.
McLaren F1 driver Oscar Piastri finished fifth after his qualifying simulation run during the FP2 session ahead of the 2024 Bahrain Grand Prix.
Lando Norris said after last week's pre-season testing, it has not been perfect for McLaren and that Red Bull and Ferrari are definitely ahead. But the Papaya cars didn't seem so lost during the second practice session. Norris's younger teammate told the media:
"In FP2 [the car] felt good, both in those qualifying style runs and those race runs. I think we are in a decent place."
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McLaren looked particularly well regarding race pace, but Piastri's qualifying run was also promising- only 15 thousandths of a second behind Carlos Sainz and 67 thousandths ahead of Max Verstappen.
"I think we are more or less where we thought. There are some runs we need to look at in more details as to why they were how they were, both good and bad. But I think the overall feeling of the day was pretty positive."
Nevertheless, the Australian driver didn't raise his hopes as he is aware many of the cars ran low-power engine modes as well as different fuel loads, so the results might be misleading. He mainly expected to see more from Red Bull.
"I think we are kind of in the mix, Red Bull don’t look quite as quick as we thought, we’ll see how many sandbags come out tomorrow."
Red Bull still remains the favorite, but it seems the battle behind might be as close as last year. Nobody ahead of qualifying knows where exactly they stand with performance compared to others. Piastri added:
"It’s a lot closer than I expected, Mercedes look quick, Fernando looks quick so yeah, always a bit hard to judge on a Friday but I think we are around the points."
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