Piastri admits McLaren's pace 'not been quite as comfortable' after missing out on Italian GP pole

Oscar Piastri admits that McLaren's pace ahead of the Italian Grand Prix has "not been quite as comfortable" as other weekends this year after missing out on pole position.

The Australian will start Sunday's 53-lap race from third, behind polesitter Max Verstappen and title rival Lando Norris having been unable to match either with his final Qualifying effort.

Piastri heads into the race with a 34-point lead over Norris and believes that despite the pair having been the pacesetters this season, the rest of the field were much closer at Monza.

"Turn 1 was a little bit average but the rest of the lap all felt pretty tight," he said after hopping out of the car. "I feel like I executed a pretty good session, built up to it a little bit at the start and found my feet, but I think it’s just been incredibly tight this weekend.

"Max and the Red Bull looked quick this weekend – to be honest a lot of teams have looked quick. It’s not been quite as comfortable for us, so the result’s not a big surprise, but we’d like to be a little bit further up."

Although having been beaten to the top spot on Saturday, Piastri was confident that he would perform better in the race, with both McLaren cars carrying generally more downforce than their rivals.

"The race is always very different. I’m pretty confident for tomorrow," he added.

Norris headed into Qualifying having topped two Free Practice sessions in Italy, but ran deep on his first run in Q2 which put him at risk of an early exit and required another run on a fresh set of soft tyres.

He was able to recover to Q3 and went on to post a much quicker second flying lap in Q3 that fell just short of Verstappen's record-breaking effort.

"No, Max has been quick all weekend and it’s never a surprise with Max," said Norris when asked if he was surprised at Verstappen's pace.

"It was quite a session from me, just up and down and too many mistakes there, but to put it all together on the last lap, I was pretty happy, so I’m happy with P2.

"Our race on a Sunday is normally our strength, but to get past Max I’m sure is going to be a big challenge, but we’ll wait and see.

"Their pace was also very strong, you see at the end of the stint they’re doing the same lap times as us.

"I don’t expect any magical things, we have some Ferraris behind who I’m sure are going to want to come through as quickly as possible. It’s a long race, a lot of things can happen and we’ll see what we can do."