Oscar Piastri is optimistic about there being \u201ca lot up for grabs\u201d for himself and McLaren as the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend develops, with the squad\u2019s upgrades \u201cworking as expected\u201d on team mate Lando Norris\u2019 car.<\/p>\n
Most of the F1 field struggled for grip across Friday\u2019s pair of practice sessions around the resurfaced and dusty Hungaroring track, leading to various lock-ups, wide moments and a crash for Alpine<\/a>\u2019s Franco Colapinto<\/a>.<\/p>\n Piastri<\/a>\u2019s efforts to get up to speed were made more difficult after he sat out FP1 for McLaren<\/a> reserve driver Leonardo Fornaroli \u2013 the Australian jumping into the cockpit in FP2 and winding up eighth fastest.<\/p>\n However, Piastri did not run the full update package used by Norris<\/a>, who posted the third-quickest time of the day behind pace-setting Ferrari<\/a> drivers Lewis Hamilton<\/a> and Charles Leclerc<\/a>.<\/p>\n Summing up his afternoon at the wheel, Piastri said: \u201cVery, very challenging, for sure. I think the track conditions are pretty challenging out there \u2013 it\u2019s very windy.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a very challenging circuit at the moment, and obviously missing a practice session has made it pretty tough.\u201d<\/p>\n Pushed on McLaren\u2019s upgrades, Piastri noted: \u201cI didn\u2019t have them today. I think on Lando\u2019s car they\u2019ve been working as expected, which is good. I don\u2019t think they\u2019ve completely changed the car, which obviously we weren\u2019t expecting, but would have been nice.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll see what it\u2019s like on my car tomorrow and hopefully we can have a successful day.\u201d<\/p>\n In terms of the competitive order, he added: \u201cI think the Ferraris looked very quick in both sessions. I think Lando looked competitive in that one [FP2] especially. I think the Mercedes is very hard to read, so let\u2019s wait and see tomorrow.<\/p>\n \u201cI think if we execute a good day, it seems like there can be a lot up for grabs.\u201d<\/p>\n Randy Singh, McLaren\u2019s Senior Director of Racing, shared some more insight into the changes made to the MCL40, and the outfit\u2019s hopes that they will ultimately cut the gap to the front of the grid.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the upgrades, really, have delivered as we expected, which is the most positive thing that we can say,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cToday, Oscar ran the old floor in P2, just so we could compare across cars, so tomorrow Oscar will have the new floor as well.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to seeing where we end up tomorrow. The gap to whoever\u2019s been quickest in Qualifying or in the race has been a bit bigger in recent races, so we always knew that we weren\u2019t going to close that gap in one go, but hopefully we\u2019ve made a good step to doing so.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri is optimistic about there being \u201ca lot up for grabs\u201d for himself and McLaren as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-821775","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\/821775","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=821775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}