Oscar Piastri’s messy qualifying and fresh F1 title blow explained

Oscar Piastri’s hopes of winning the F1 world championship suffered a fresh setback in qualifying at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

The Australian could only qualify fifth in a wet qualifying session as McLaren teammate and title rival Lando Norris claimed a stunning third consecutive pole position.

Piastri was ultimately thwarted after being caught out by a late yellow flag caused by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc taking a trip into the Turn 12 run-off area.

That forced Piastri to back out of his final run of Q3 and he was unable to improve his time as a result.

"There was more out there that we didn't get to use,” Piastri told Sky Sports F1.

“We’ve got a good car underneath us that seems to be working well in all conditions so we can have a strong race tomorrow and hopefully make up some spots.”

Piastri has it all to do in title race

Piastri is 24 points behind Norris with three races to go and faces a mammoth task going into Sunday’s grand prix if he is to claw back some of his deficit.

The result continued the trend of Piastri lagging behind Norris in recent races, though he was faster than the Briton in Q1, before his qualifying went awry.

Asked in the media pen if the situation complicated his title bid, Piastri replied: “Yes, yes it does. But it's Las Vegas after all, so a lot could happen.

“We've seen pretty entertaining races here the last couple of years, a lot of action, so hopefully I can get myself involved on the right side of that action and make up some ground tomorrow.”

Piastri, who also had a near-miss with Racing Bulls rookie Isack Hadjar, hopes that a podium could still be possible.

“It's difficult to know exactly where anyone sits because of the lack of proper race running this weekend, but I think the car's been pretty quick in all conditions,” he said.

“It's quick in the rain then, it's quick in the dry yesterday. Yesterday the same thing, didn't get many opportunities to use it, so I think we've got good pace and hopefully we can use that to go forwards tomorrow.”