who took aim at the Australian earlier in the year<\/a> \u2014 declaring the championship leader\u2019s driving has been \u201cmessy\u201d since Baku.<\/p>\nNorris, Piastri unite against Verstappen | 00:47<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t hear a lot of confidence there,\u201d Villeneuve said of Piastri\u2019s interview. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s messy. His driving has been messy since Baku and you can see it. Normally, that means a tenth, a two tenths, a little mistake here and there, not setting the car right and it gets to your head and seeing Max again in the front, that\u2019s going to eat him all evening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Piastri was the only title contender to run in first practice but his extra track time didn\u2019t translate to immediate improvements, further underlined by what Sky Sports presenter Simon Lazenby described as a \u201ctelling\u201d piece of team radio near the end of the second session.<\/p>\n
\u201cApart from the last two laps, how did it look? I guess McLaren are on another planet, no?\u201d Leclerc said, to which is engineer replied \u201cNorris is very fast, more so than Piastri\u201d.<\/p>\n
Piastri continues to struggle. (Photo by Lillian SUWANRUMPHA \/ AFP)Source: AFP<\/p>\n
Mercedes also remain a threat to Piastri and George Russell was sixth ahead of Yuki Tsunoda in the second Red Bull, two-time champion Fernando Alonso of Aston Martin, Williams\u2019 Carlos Sainz and Lance Stroll in the second Aston Martin.<\/p>\n
Liam Lawson was 11th and was first out for Racing Bulls on a glorious sunlit day at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez with all the teams at full strength after nine rookies had been drafted in during the earlier opening session topped by Leclerc.<\/p>\n
Russell soon set a top time before being outpaced by Antonelli and then Leclerc, demonstrating that Ferrari have found some encouraging pace with a lap in 1:18.669.<\/p>\n
Norris, bidding to overhaul team-mate Piastri\u2019s 14-point advantage in the championship, complained of \u201ca lot of misfire… out of every corner, a lot of surges,\u201d suggesting possible engine issues.<\/p>\n
He was within 0.012 of Leclerc as they all ran on mediums, many of the leading drivers finding the limits after missing the earlier run, with Hamilton third in the other Ferrari with Norris between them in second and Verstappen fourth and Piastri fifth.<\/p>\n
It was clearly a tight contest between the leading group with McLaren struggling to recover their lost supremacy after abandoning car development, having won the constructors\u2019 title.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur 2026 project would have been heavily compromised if we had continued with updates,\u201d said team boss Andrea Stella. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to win championships in the future and to win championships in the future you need to have a competitive car…<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t forget that as champions, we are the most restricted by the regulations in terms of the wind tunnel allowance… It\u2019s not like we have unlimited resources that we can use.\u201d<\/p>\n
Red Bull error forces Tsunoda early exit | 02:01<\/p>\n
By mid-session, Leclerc had cut his time to 1:17.545 on softs to lead ahead of the two McLarens with Piastri struggling to match Norris\u2019s pace, both six-tenths adrift — and then Verstappen, the only man still on mediums, banged in a flyer in 1:17.392 to go clear by 0.153.<\/p>\n
After an unscheduled off-track excursion, Hamilton was slower to move to softs for qualifying simulation laps and when he did he slotted in fifth behind Verstappen Leclerc, Antonelli and Norris — representing four different teams.<\/p>\n
With 20 minutes to go, Piastri was down in 12th and eight-tenths adrift of the Red Bull pace. The top ten were all within six-tenths of the Dutchman, a scenario suggesting the Melburnian driver needed a significant improvement.<\/p>\n
Most then switched to long run tests of different tyres, some hoping the softs would hold up long enough to enable them to avoid using the hard in Sunday\u2019s race.<\/p>\n
Verstappen, on softs, then slid at Turn Four, complaining \u201cthere\u2019s just no grip.\u201d <\/p>\n
Like Piastri and Norris, he knew that tyres were likely to be a key factor in Sunday\u2019s 71-lap showdown with all the top teams capable of finding the speed on the evidence of Friday\u2019s action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen topped the times for Red Bull ahead of Ferrari\u2019s Charles Leclerc as McLaren\u2019s title duellists struggled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-238920","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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