Norris: When I stepped on the brake, the pedal went down.

The start of the Austrian weekend is not going well for McLaren drivers. Lando Norris struggled to get into the second qualifying session due to brake issues and Daniel Ricciardo couldn’t even make it.

Daniel Riccardo (16th): “On the Red Bull Ring it’s not easy to respect the track limits because when you’re in the cockpit the view is limited, you don’t see much around the car and what’s in front of it the front wheels. In any case, you need to drive as accurately as possible, carefully attack the curbs and do not go beyond the white line.

But this is one point, and the second is that most of the corners are fast, say 9th, and when you’ve taken a certain trajectory at the entrance of it, you have to stick to it, and it determines how you get out. This also complicates the task.

But I had other problems. These machines are sensitive to gusts of wind, and it was very strong today, and this affects the steering. On some sections of the track I couldn’t find the limit of what was possible under braking, and while it can’t be said that there were serious problems with it, I couldn’t get out of the first session nonetheless.

I lost a little bit all the way around the circle, and I don’t even know why. It’s not that I’m somehow not completely confident in driving or scared of anything when cornering. It’s just that I’m generally not very comfortable behind the wheel, it’s a kind of insecurity that prevents me from driving at the limit of the car’s capabilities. Frankly, I don’t even know how to explain it. But we felt during training that the car was not too fast.”

Lando Norris (15th): “I’m not exactly sure what the problems with the brakes are, maybe the hydraulics weren’t working properly or the brake-by-wire system, but they weren’t working as they should. I was also lucky to somehow pass a circle in the first session, but in the second part of qualifying, every time I pressed the brake pedal, it just failed.

I couldn’t do anything, although I tried to brake earlier and less intensively, but that made me go much slower. It’s a shame, of course, because I thought the pace of the car would allow me to reach the final session. So the day brought some frustration, and now we have to try to recoup.

It’s impossible to race in a car like that, so we have to try and fix everything tomorrow. On the one hand I am a bit sad now, on the other hand we still have chances to correct the situation – both in tomorrow’s sprint and in the race on Sunday.

Anything can happen from start to finish, as we’ve seen at Silverstone recently, so I’m hoping we’ll still be competing in the remaining days of the weekend, and I’ve got a fighting spirit.

Andrea StellaRace Director: “The first day of this weekend was really difficult, many problems prevented normal preparation for qualifying and affected the results.

When we talk about Daniel, we had difficulties during training that prevented him from systematically preparing. Entry to the second qualifying session depends on a few splits of a second and every tenth affects the result.

Lando showed that the car had enough speed to fight for the qualifying final, but then his car ran into problems with the brakes. In the evening we will do our best to solve all the problems and be ready to fight for the points, both in tomorrow’s sprint and in the Austrian Grand Prix on Sunday.