Spanish Grand Prix 2025: Oscar Piastri beats McLaren team-mate Lando Norris to pole in Barcelona

Piastri’s advantage suggests that a rule change aimed at restricting the flexing of front wings for aerodynamic gain has had no effect on McLaren.

It was introduced by governing body the FIA after intensive lobbying by Red Bull, who – along with Ferrari – hoped it would peg back some of McLaren’s performance.

Verstappen and Red Bull have tended to be a close match for McLaren at circuits with predominantly long medium and high-speed corners, as this one does.

But the gap between pole and Verstappen was bigger than at Imola, where the Dutchman won, and in Japan and Saudi Arabia, where he was on pole.

It was also the biggest margin the pole-sitter has had all season.

Piastri said the rule change had limited impact on McLaren and the way they prepared their car for the race.

He added: “It’s been a strong weekend so far. Didn’t start off that well but today the car’s been mega.”

Norris had been 0.017secs faster than Piastri on the first runs in the top 10 shootout, partly thanks to a small slipstream he earned from his team-mate at the start of his lap – to which Piastri reacted over the radio by saying: “Cheeky.”

“I don’t think there was anything untoward,” he added. “I think it was just a coincidence.”

Norris joked: “We planned it all weekend,” before adding: “No, it was just a coincidence.”

But Norris made errors in a couple of corners on his final run and, although he improved his time, fell short of Piastri.

Norris said: “Just a couple of little mistakes. Turn One, where you don’t want to make a mistake because it harms the tyres for the rest of the lap. A couple of little squiggles there. And Turn Four as well. The pace was easily there but a couple of little mistakes.”

Verstappen had been a long way off on his first run in the final session, after trying a different approach to preparing his tyres on the out lap which did not work, but leapt up on his final run.

“Turn One was never good even though I tried different approaches,” he said. “The rest was fine, the car was in a decent window, unfortunately not fast enough.”