McLaren
In what will be a seismic weekend for the team who celebrate their 1000th Grand Prix on Sunday, McLaren started quietly in FP1. Both drivers had steady sessions but neither was able to set a fully representative lap time, with Piastri catching traffic on his flying lap while Norris slid over the kerbs in the Swimming Pool complex. Their day did not improve as the afternoon wore on, with Norris parking up early on in FP2 with what was at the time a suspected battery issue.
That meant no soft tyre running for him, leaving Norris playing catch up tomorrow. As for Piastri, he hit the walls on one of his flying laps and while he was able to continue, he could not extract enough pace to challenge for the top spots as McLaren appear to have dropped behind Red Bull in the pecking order.
Lando Norris – FP1: 1:15.291, P6; FP2: 1:15.274, P19
“Tricky day. We’re clearly off the pace and need to find time all across the lap. Frustrating to lose track time today, as that’s always important here in Monaco. The car simply turned off, so we need to investigate what happened there.
“We’ll work hard overnight to try and get more performance out of the car, but realistically it’s going to be difficult to compete at the front of the field this weekend based on where we are compared to the competition. It’s not necessarily a surprise, but it’s not where we want to be, so we’ll work hard to understand what we’re missing and try to recover where we can for tomorrow.”
Oscar Piastri – FP1: 1:15.565, P8; FP2: 1:14.088, P7
“Today was certainly a tough day for the team. We’re not where we want to be, and the gap to the front is larger than we had hoped for. We made some small steps forward between the first and second practice sessions, but we’re still a second off the pace, which shows how much work we have to do.
“We need to go through the data and find some answers overnight because, as it stands, we are simply not quick enough. There’s no single solution that will turn things around completely, but we will explore every option available to find performance and be in a more competitive position for the rest of the weekend.”
Rob Marshall, Chief Technical Officer & Chief Designer
“We faced a couple of challenges today. On the performance side, we saw some promising signs in the second and third sectors, but we were struggling for pace in the opening part of the lap. We have a few things to look at, whether it’s related to tyre temperature or setup, to unlock more performance. We’ve brought some circuit-specific updates here, as you always do for Monaco, and we’re confident in the fundamental package, but know there is work to do to put us in a more competitive position with the leading three teams this weekend.
“Lando’s session was unfortunately cut short by an electrical fault which caused the car to shut down. The team is working hard to diagnose the root cause so we can ensure it doesn’t happen again, and to make sure that the focus is on optimising everything for Qualifying.”
