Can McLaren continue the upward trend of the past two races? The result on Friday at Formula 1 training in Hungary 2023 at least looks like it, because Lando Norris ended the training day 0.015 seconds behind Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) in second place.
“It was a good Friday,” summed up the Briton. “I’m relatively happy with the overall pace of the car, but there are still a few things we need to work on ahead of qualifying. I feel like I can’t push quite as much as I’d like in some parts of the track.”
He believes that he can still get a little more out of the car, but he does recognize a good balance in the car.
However, McLaren fans must be told that Friday at the Hungaroring was not quite as representative. On the one hand, the conditions were sometimes difficult, on the other hand, the new tire rule with fewer sets meant that not all teams were on the road with the soft tires in order to save them.
Despite this, Norris has a good feeling: “I would say that our improved pace since the upgrade continues to help us and gives the team confidence in some high-speed corners – but the slow corners are still the ones we focus on and want to improve.”
For teammate Oscar Piastri, on the other hand, Friday didn’t go quite so well. The Australian is also second – but you have to turn the table for that. More than 1.4 seconds behind bring him only to the penultimate place.
Piastri suffered damage to his underbody in the second practice session and therefore had to watch in the garage at times and was unable to do as many laps as he wanted. “But the team did a great job to get the car back on track for valuable laps,” he said.
“I feel like I’ve been in a reasonable position in both sessions and I’m quite happy with that. It looks like we have decent pace so we’ll be looking at the data overnight and preparing for what’s to come tomorrow,” said Piastri.
Meanwhile, team boss Andrea Stella draws a mixed conclusion: “The changeable weather in the first practice session and a damaged underbody on Oscar’s car in the second practice session meant that we weren’t able to do as many laps as we would have liked today,” he says.
“But despite the limitations, we collected some useful data about the car and the tires to prepare for qualifying and the race,” said Stella. “As usual, we will work overnight to analyze what we have learned and prepare as best we can for the interesting debut of the alternative tire allocation format.”