McLaren<\/p>\n
McLaren were right up there in final practice, but they faded in Qualifying. Piastri was one of only two drivers to get a lap time in before the red flags in Q3 and thus was in a good position, but his last run included a few scruffy moments which sent him down the order. Norris at least bagged a place on the second row, and can fight for the podium from there \u2013 especially if the cars ahead start to scrap, or struggle with bad tyre degradation.<\/p>\n
Lando Norris, 4th, 1:15.001<\/p>\n
“We showed some progress today and I’m reasonably happy with P4. The Red Flag in the final corner on my first push lap was unlucky and probably cost us a shot at P3, but P4 is still a strong place to start. Compared to Monaco, we\u2019re back closer to where we should be, and the pace felt better overall. With that said, the gap to Pole, around three and a half tenth, is still significant, and the car wasn\u2019t easy to drive with the wind and heat making it inconsistent, especially at the rear.<\/p>\n
“Looking at tomorrow, it\u2019s going to be a hot, high-degradation race and tyre management will be everything. Strategy could go one, two, or even three stops depending on how the tyres behave, and I think most teams will end up doing similar things. There\u2019s definitely an opportunity off the start, with smart calls, to move forward, but sustaining that against Ferrari and Mercedes over 66 laps will be tough. We\u2019ll fight for every chance, maximise track position and try to force errors, but we\u2019re realistic – if we\u2019re three tenths off per lap today, we need to be perfect to stay in the mix tomorrow. Overall, happy with the step we\u2019ve made, not happy enough with the gap. We\u2019ll keep pushing.”<\/p>\n
Oscar Piastri, 7th, 1:15.090<\/p>\n
“It was incredibly tight today, with such a small gap from third down to us in P7. We lost more than expected in the final sector, so we need to review why because the lap up to then felt good. Right now, Mercedes looks strong, and Ferrari have taken a step with their upgrades – their corner speeds have been impressive all season, even if they\u2019re still paying a price on the straights.<\/p>\n
“Tomorrow will likely be a long, hot two-stop race, maybe more, and the key will be managing degradation and maintaining pace across the stints. While Mercedes and Ferrari were quicker today than yesterday, strategy and tyre offsets could open up opportunities, and we feel more in the fight than last week. If the race plays out like we\u2019ve seen here in recent years, with multiple stops and differing tyre life, there\u2019s definitely a chance to gain a few positions.”<\/p>\n
Andrea Stella, Team Principal<\/p>\n
“We are back in a situation where four teams are incredibly close to one another, which is great news and a positive step forward for us after Monaco. Today was a bit of a missed opportunity, primarily because Lando was incredibly unlucky with the Red Flag. He was on a very strong first lap just 250 meters from the finish line, which forced him to be cautious on his final attempt to ensure we got a time on the board. For Oscar, the margins were razor-thin, just a tenth of a second separated P3 from P7 today.<\/p>\n
“Looking ahead to tomorrow, we are optimistic. The Grand Prix will be heavily dictated by strategy, race pace, and tyre management. While we know we still have work to do from a technical standpoint to fully optimise our tyre exploitation over a race distance, our qualifying and race pace are closely matched this year. We are definitely in the game and looking forward to an exciting fight down into Turn 1.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren McLaren were right up there in final practice, but they faded in Qualifying. Piastri was one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-475886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}