Oscar Piastri conceded that Canadian GP pole may have been possible with the medium tyre, but after a “miserable” run up to qualifying, he opted against the risk.

And Piastri was left “quite happy” with the outcome as the Championship leader took P3 on the grid behind polesitter George Russell and Max Verstappen.

Oscar Piastri: Soft tyres the right Canadian GP call?

Qualifying in Canada featured an intriguing battle between the soft and medium tyres, with picking which of those was the better one-lap compound proving a tricky task.

And come the all-important Q3 battle for pole, Russell had the yellow-walled mediums bolted onto his Mercedes, the same true for Verstappen at Red Bull, but Piastri stuck with the softs.

The decision paid off for Russell and Verstappen, but Piastri stood by his decision to continue running the C6 soft tyre, opting against the risk of switching compounds having failed to feature in the top five throughout the trio of practice sessions.

“Much better than practice, that’s for sure,” Piastri reflected on his qualifying in a press conference.

“I mean, honestly, I’m quite happy here in P3.

“After all the practice sessions, I was struggling, obviously. I didn’t have a smooth session this morning, and, yeah, everything just felt more back to normal. In qualifying, everything came alive again.

“So, you know, there’ll always be the question — should we have gone for a medium at the end? But I think with how we’d been going in practice, having just a clean run on the same compound seemed like the best idea for us, and honestly, I think it worked well. So honestly, pretty happy.”

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Asked how close he was to chucking on some mediums, Piastri replied: “I mean, we always kept it on the table, but I don’t think we were ever that — or I certainly wasn’t ever that tempted.

“Like I said, practice was pretty miserable. So, I just wanted to have a clean run through qualifying, not introduce any variables that could have made things even more difficult. That’s what we stuck to.

“I think it’s been a strength of ours so far this year — sticking to our guns and doing what we think is best for us. Would we have been on pole position on a medium? Maybe. But there’s also the risk that it goes wrong, and you end up worse than we are now. So, I’m pretty happy.”

Piastri has a golden opportunity to extend his Championship lead on Sunday, currently 10 points over McLaren team-mate Lando Norris, who is P7 only on the grid in Canada.

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