Oscar Piastri says McLaren have \u201csome things to find overnight\u201d after a difficult opening day at the Monaco Grand Prix left the Australian searching for answers on pace around the streets of Monte Carlo.<\/p>\n
Piastri ended Friday well adrift of the front-running Ferraris, with McLaren struggling to match the benchmark across both practice sessions.<\/p>\n
The Australian finished FP1 ninth on the timesheets, more than one and a half seconds off Charles Leclerc\u2019s fastest time, before improving slightly to seventh in FP2, though still more than a second off Lewis Hamilton\u2019s session-topping Ferrari.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on his day, Piastri admitted the picture inside the cockpit was as difficult as it looked from the outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt okay,\u201d he told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot as speedy as we would like unfortunately. So yeah, a bit of a difficult one.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we made a bit of progress for FP2. But I mean we went from a second-and-a-half off to a second off.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s been a tough day for us for sure. So some things to find overnight definitely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ferrari\u2019s strong form had been expected heading into the weekend, but Piastri conceded McLaren had hoped to be much closer to the leading pace on a circuit where confidence and precision are critical.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always expected Ferrari to be quick and they look very very quick as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we were hoping we would be a fair bit closer.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo let\u2019s see what we can try and muster up for tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
With only one practice session remaining before qualifying in Monaco, Piastri was also asked whether McLaren already had clear directions for overnight changes, but the Australian suggested there were no easy fixes on the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot massively, no,\u201d he admitted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think in today\u2019s Formula 1 there\u2019s never anything you can do to turn the car completely upside down. So we\u2019ll try and find something for sure. Because we need to.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut yeah. I don\u2019t have any great ideas at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Piastri\u2019s running was relatively straightforward compared to teammate Lando Norris, McLaren\u2019s day was complicated further by an electrical issue that sidelined Norris during FP2.<\/p>\n
McLaren Chief Technical Officer Rob Marshall confirmed the team is still working to understand the failure.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t know conclusively yet,\u201d he told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had an electrical problem on the car and it shut down. But we\u2019ve not had enough time to go through the data and find out exactly what\u2019s gone wrong yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could be anything, but it\u2019s electrical.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marshall added that McLaren\u2019s focus is now on improving the car\u2019s behaviour through the lap, with particular attention on the opening sector where they appear to be losing time to Ferrari and Red Bull.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re confident we can make it a bit better,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we were struggling in the initial part of the lap. And then when it went through sector two and three, we started to be a bit more competitive.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I think maybe that\u2019s tyre temperature or maybe something else.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we\u2019ve got a bit of stuff to work on certainly in the first half of the lap.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri says McLaren have \u201csome things to find overnight\u201d after a difficult opening day at the Monaco…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":718627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-718626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718626","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=718626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}