In short:
Oscar Piastri has qualified seventh for Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix.
The Australian's McLaren teammate is on pole for the first ever F1 race at the new Madring in Madrid.
What's next?
ABC Sport will have a live blog of the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix from 9pm AEST on Sunday, September 13.
Oscar Piastri's increasingly underwhelming Formula 1 season has taken another bad turn in Madrid with a "pretty shocking" qualifying lap at the Spanish Grand Prix.
The Australian's hugely disappointing seventh-place finish in qualifying on the new Madring street circuit came as teammate Lando Norris delivered a pole-grabbing lap hailed by McLaren's team boss as a "masterpiece".
The world champion produced his dazzling lap in the sunshine seemingly from nowhere, clocking a 1 minute 31.82 seconds circuit to edge Mercedes's championship leader Kimi Antonelli by just 0.011 of a second, with Red Bull's Max Verstappen third and Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton fourth.
But while a "shocked" Norris was hailing what he called "probably one of the best laps I've done", it was back to the drawing board for Piastri, who was disappointed to finish in 1:32.294 — remarkably, nearly half a second behind his teammate.
"The first lap wasn't too bad but the second lap was pretty shocking. Disappointing," said the 25-year-old, who could find it difficult to make much headway from seventh on Sunday on an unforgiving, tight circuit where, he admitted, overtaking "will be difficult".
He is keeping up a brave face, though, still talking up how he hopes to earn a victory somewhere this year to set himself up for a realistic crack at the title in 2027.
Piastri has not won a race since the Dutch Grand Prix now over a year ago when he was leading the 2025 championship, but he is adamant his dramatic fall-off was not a factor in his disappointing 2026 campaign.
"Of course, I would love to win a race or two this year, or more if I can. But for me, honestly, the biggest thing, the end goal is to try and win championships," he said.
"And if I can't do that this year, then I want to make sure I'm as best prepared as I can for next year."
For the moment, though, that still seems a long way off as his smooth driving style just doesn't seem to be suited to the vast changes to the 2026 F1 cars.
"It's all to do with technically driving the car. There's nothing to do with a hangover from last year … it's very much a technical thing," he explained.
"It's not like I'm slow, feeling sorry for myself or thinking about last year. It's just that a few of the weekends I've had to drive the car in a different way that just hasn't really worked for me.
"The biggest thing this year has been the cars are very different to drive, both from a power unit point of view but also the car itself is fundamentally very different and the tyres also.
"You've got to drive it very differently and I would say it's not necessarily in the way that I would choose to drive a race car. So there's just been some struggles getting to grips with that."
Meanwhile, though, Norris does seem to be getting to grips with it, producing "one of those laps where everything pretty much worked perfectly".
The champion's 19th career pole and third of the season was hailed by McLaren team boss Andrea Stella as a "masterpiece", which could only have been bettered if he had not made a mistake at the very last corner that possibly cost him 0.3 of a second.
Norris had been only sixth after the first run in the third qualifying session but he diced daringly with the wall during the breathtaking final lap, and declared over the radio at the end: "Oh, what a lap, gorgeous … oh, that might be my best one."
AAP/Reuters
ABC Sport will have a live blog of the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix from 9pm AEST on Sunday, September 13.
