Piastri: The car still has no stability

According to the training results, Oscar Piastri was in the top five, while Lando Norris was on the very last line of the Friday protocol, but the McLaren team is not inclined to attach special importance to this, believing that the day still went well. normally.

Oscar Piastri (5th): “Of course the car made a good impression in the second practice, this was the case both during the qualifying simulation and during the long series of laps. I think we’re doing well, although the MCL38’s behavior is still unstable at times, so it’s hard to say exactly how we’re handling it, but it seems like everyone is in pretty much the same position.

I think we are more or less at the level we expected, but individual races need to be analyzed in more detail to understand why they went the way they did, as we have had some good moments and some not so good moments. But we assess the results of the day quite positively.

We are about level with our direct rivals and the Red Bull drivers are not yet as fast as we thought, although we will see how many sandbags they unload from their cars tomorrow! (laughs)

As always, it’s a bit difficult to judge the standings on Friday, but it looks like we’ll be in a position to fight for the points, although it’s unclear how close we are to the podium. I hope that we will remain at approximately this level tomorrow.

But today there was a very strong wind on the track, which caused additional problems, as cars of this generation are very sensitive to external conditions and the wind affects the level of downforce. In general there were difficulties, and I foresee that this will be the case tomorrow as well.”

Lando Norris (20th): “Overall the day was normal and it went even better than I expected, although it wasn’t the best for me personally judging by how I handled it. I haven’t been able to sort everything out, but let’s hope that this was just today, and tomorrow I can do everything more correctly.

The team has conducted a number of experiments and we are making progress in understanding the machine’s characteristics, although there are many areas where we need to improve.

The track conditions, especially the strong winds, affected some cars more, others less, but it is clear that Red Bull is still ahead.”

Andrea Stella, team leader: “The first day of training was productive, there were no problems and we fully completed the entire program. Even after three days of testing there are always many unresolved issues that need to be resolved closer to the race weekend, and today we worked on the settings.

It is also important to continue to analyze the behavior of the rubber under cooler weather conditions than during the test days.

Oscar had a good session, doing both mock qualifying and long sets of laps, while Lando failed to set a fast lap on soft tires, so his 20th position on Friday’s timesheet doesn’t mean much. But we are happy with the information we have gathered and it looks like we are in a very good position to fight for the points.”