7 March 2023 16:07 (UTC)
"Today was clean, we got our running in, got a good understanding of the car"
Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Friday 14 August
Hear from McLaren Formula 1 drivers Carlos Sainz, Lando Norris, and Racing Director Andrea Stella after Free Practice for the Spanish Grand Prix.
FP1 | 1m18.733s (+1.948s) | 33 laps | 11th | |
FP2 | 1m18.214s (+1.331s) | 33 laps | 7th |
“A normal Friday for us, where we tried a couple of test items and mainly tried to understand the overheating issue we had in my car over the last weekend. Unfortunately, the problem is still there and costing lap-time, so we’ll keep investigating in order to take the best decision.
“Apart from that, performance-wise, the car wasn't too bad today. There are still a few changes to make for tomorrow, but the main focus point now is still the cooling.”
FP1 | 1m18.744s (+1.959s) | 32 laps | 13th | |
FP2 | 1m18.506s (+1.623s) | 38 laps | 14th |
“A tricky day in terms of getting to know the car a bit around here, but not too bad to be honest. We’re trying a few of the things we struggled with in Silverstone, but we also made a fresh start as it’s a new track.
“I think we’re fairly comfortable, we’ve got a good direction to work in but we’re not there yet – I’m basically looking for more grip overall. The car doesn’t feel bad, so I think we can make some improvements overnight and be a bit more competitive. On the whole, today was clean, we got our running in, got a good understanding of the car – that’s what’s most important.”
“We’ve had a productive Friday and have been able to work through all our planned test items and improve our understanding of the balance of the car, the level of grip and the tyres. The temperature in August is, of course, hotter than we’re used to in Barcelona for the race, and that creates some particular challenges for cooling and tyre temperature. We still see the split of temperatures across cars and we will make further changes tomorrow in order to resolve this anomaly.
“On the tyre side, it looks like the behaviour is more typical that what we saw in Silverstone, where we suffered with some issues. We know that when the track is windy, our car becomes a bit temperamental – but we’ll try to extract the most out of it tomorrow and be fighting for Q3 to give us the best chance of good points on Sunday.”
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