McLaren
Norris has been struggling with a car issue, which McLaren believe is now fixed. It does seem to be better for the World Champion, who like his team mate was in the mix for the front rows. Once again, McLaren seem a fraction off the pace when it matters, with Piastri just 0.055s behind Leclerc. Norris was fifth, so the team could be on for double points tomorrow, but need to do some work to see if they can find anything extra ahead of Qualifying.
Lando Norris, 5th, 1:31.587
“P5 today, but not my best lap. Overall, the car is feeling good, and as a team, we are happy that things are working exactly as they should. However, the field is incredibly close, and you have to put in a perfect lap, which I unfortunately didn’t manage to do. We’ll review the data this evening, see what we can do from P5 on the grid tomorrow and then look to improve in tomorrow’s Grand Prix Qualifying session.”
Oscar Piastri, 4th, 1:31.454
“P4. Overall, happy with that. I think we got close to the maximum of what we could have achieved today. It’s always difficult on a Sprint weekend to get everything right, but I was much happier than in the past few weeks with our performance. We were struggling quite a bit on the Mediums, but the car really came alive once we switched to the Softs. The added grip gave me the confidence to push, and it felt like a different car. That said, while the Soft was a big step in the right direction, it helped mask some issues so there’s still work to do to find a more comfortable balance for the rest of the weekend. We’ll see what we can do in the Sprint tomorrow ahead of Grand Prix Qualifying.”
Andrea Stella, Team Principal
“It was an interesting Qualifying session, full of drama, which confirmed just how closely matched the frontrunners are. It’s no coincidence that there are four different cars in the top four positions.
“For our part, we’re reasonably satisfied with the result and the level of performance shown, as they’re a sign that, at least on this track, we’re back in a situation similar to that seen before Baku, when the differences in grid positions were relatively small. All things considered, it’s a good starting point for the rest of the weekend and we hope to be in contention for podiums.
“Certainly, some of our rivals have made progress in recent Grands Prix, in terms of performance, and today we saw further confirmation of that. We must continue to work on the car to optimise its potential as much as possible.
“As for how Sprint Qualifying went, there were some tricky moments in SQ1 because, in the final minutes, only a few cars, including ours, had set a meaningful time, but we managed to progress to the next round fairly comfortably. In SQ3, we decided to set two flying laps to allow the drivers to make the most of the switch from Medium to Soft tyres, particularly given that even the softer compounds are showing relatively limited degradation this year.
“Our attention now turns to the Sprint tomorrow evening, where we will continue to learn more about our car in these conditions, before preparing for Grand Prix Qualifying tomorrow night.”
