Oscar Piastri barely broke a sweat under the blazing Catalan sun, demonstrating a fearsome control to claim pole for the Spanish Grand Prix. Indeed, such has been the dominance and the nonchalance with which he claimed this pole and his wins this season, it was put to him that he was taking on Kimi Räikkönen’s mantle as the Ice Man, albeit in the somewhat less flattering form for the 24-year-old of Ice Boy.
Piastri’s pole was imperious at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, beating his teammate Lando Norris into second by a huge two-tenths of a second, the biggest margin of the season, with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in third, three-tenths down.
George Russell was fourth for Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton, who has struggled in Spain this weekend, found his pace when it mattered, taking fifth place for Ferrari and hoping to challenge for a podium place.
Piastri took the top spot with the same almost preternatural calm that has defined his four wins and three previous poles this season, the Australian repeatedly demonstrating immense calm and control under pressure. He was pushed into a shootout by Norris over their final laps and there was nothing between them, but, whereas the British driver went to the limit and in so doing made two minor errors, Piastri was on rails and his car flowed with insouciant ease around the sweeping high-speed turns.
At its close he was asked if he felt it was fair his nonchalant cool in almost any circumstances justified the new nickname. “I’m not sure I want to go under the name Ice Boy,” he said, with a laugh that was joined heartily by Norris and Verstappen. “Certainly there’s been qualifiers and races where it’s not been nonchalant and there’s been a lot of emotion behind them.
“I’m just not a particularly emotional person. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still moments that I am emotional but you know I also know that it’s a nice thing to have, starting on pole. But it’s not the end of the weekend, the points are tomorrow.”
It was a fair evaluation, given every point might prove vital as he leads the world championship by only three from Norris. The latter was clearly disappointed and he held his hands up for his errors but the gap was an ominous chasm between teammates in identical machinery.
That machinery has very much been under the spotlight all weekend. Yet for all that the question of whether the FIA’s clampdown with a new technical directive on the flexing of front wings had dominated the buildup to this meeting and the potential for the pecking order to be reset, it was very much business as usual in Barcelona. It is a circuit that perhaps better than any other demonstrates which team has the best aerodynamic package.
McLaren have always insisted they were gaining no advantage and the running in Spain suggests they were spot-on. “It clearly slowed McLaren down a lot,” was the caustically sarcastic assessment of Mercedes’s George Russell after practice.
It was the almost resigned evaluation of a driver who knows that short of some form of miraculous development, itself a vanishingly slight chance given all the resources are already pointed at the 2026 cars and the new regulations, McLaren will not be stopped.
Perhaps the only question that remains will be if the change affects the McLaren’s ability to be so easy on its tyres, which will be evident in the race, but nothing indicates there will be any material effect on this either, as the team principal, Andrea Stella, indicated.
“The technical directive [TD] was a big talking point, [but] quite immaterial, I would say,” he said. “Formula One is numbers, is technical. When you look at the numbers associated with the TD it was always going to be minor. It entertained to have this kind of debate but in our numbers, in our simulation, everything was very small, we weren’t concerned.”
In what was an unusually tense session in Barcelona, for the McLaren duo at least, on the first hot laps in Q3 Norris had set the pace, gaining a tiny tow from his teammate, who described it with typical unconcerned equanimity as “cheeky”, but the Briton and Piastri were almost inseparable.
For the final runs, with Norris heading out first, he was looking for the very limit perhaps a tad too hard, while the Australian was flawless, with a lap of clinical execution that left his teammate behind. If, as it appears, the championship is between the pair, then Norris must find a way to match his teammate’s icy precision.
Several hours after qualifying concluded, the Aston Martin team issued a statement announcing that Lance Stroll, who qualified in 14th, would not take part in the race. They said the driver had been experiencing pain for the past six weeks in his hand and wrist, believed to be in relation to the medical procedure he underwent after a cycling accident in February 2023 in which he fractured his wrists.
Kimi Antonelli was sixth for Mercedes, Charles Leclerc seventh for Ferrari, Pierre Gasly eighth for Alpine, Isack Hadjar ninth for Racing Bulls and Fernando Alonso 10th for Aston Martin.
Alex Albon was in 11th for Williams, Gabriel Bortoleto in 12th for Sauber, Liam Lawson 13th for Racing Bulls and Ollie Bearman 15th for Haas.
Yuki Tsunoda’s struggles with the Red Bull continued, the Japanese driver going out in 20th, once more leaving Verstappen alone at the front of the grid.
Nico Hülkenberg was in 16th for Sauber, Esteban Ocon in 17th for Haas, Carlos Sainz 18th for Williams and Franco Colapinto in 19th for Alpine.
