Circuit of the Americas, Friday 21 October

Hear from McLaren Formula 1 drivers Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo, young driver Alex Palou, and Executive Director, Racing, Andrea Stella after practice for the United States Grand Prix.

FP1	1m37.856s (+0.999s)	23 laps	9th
FP2	1m39.547s (+2.737s)	26 laps	6th

“A reasonable day. This is a difficult circuit, some parts are still quite bumpy, which is a challenge in this car. Some parts of the track are smoother where they’ve resurfaced it. I think we’ve found a direction to go in with the set-up, so we’ll make some more changes overnight, as it seemed in the right direction from FP1 to FP2. FP2 we didn’t really get to try too many things because of the tyre test. Reasonable Friday and I look forward to tomorrow.”

FP2

1m37.627s (+0.817s)

40 laps

3rd

“An interesting day. I didn’t drive this morning but then had a long afternoon session, so it was kind of intense. It was obviously really cool just to be back out here. I love this place and this circuit is good fun. It’s pretty different with these cars this year. There are a lot more blind spots and the cars are still pretty stiff, so even though they’ve resurfaced it’s still a bit of a handful in some places.

“I think it was a productive day, we’ll definitely make some changes tonight to try to help us out. It’s tricky with the different programme everyone had in FP2 to work out how competitive we are, but we’ll keep at it regardless. It was fun to get some laps in, and I’ll sleep well tonight and prepare for tomorrow.”

ALEX PALOU

FP1

1m39.911s (+3.054s)

21 laps

17th

“Awesome. I’m super-happy. The session went really well. You always think that you’re ready but you never know when you come here. Obviously there’s a bit of pressure of having a car that’s not yours, that has to go out on the track again a short time later, along with all the data we had to collect for the team. I think the Driver Development Programme work that we did before coming here was awesome because it got me ready for today – and I think I did everything I could in an hour. I felt as comfortable as I could expect. Obviously not my car, not my team environment either – but I still felt really comfortable, and I think we achieved what we wanted, so really, really happy.”

ANDREA STELLA, Executive Director, Racing

“We’ve had a clean and productive first day at the Circuit of the Americas. Both cars ran without issue, which allowed us to complete our run plans on what was a busy day. We ran Alex Palou in FP1, and we’re all very impressed with his performance. He prepared really well and executed the run plan exactly as we wished, always in control of the car, delivering valuable information – well done Alex.

“He handed the car back for FP2, and Daniel was able to get through a very busy programme, first on the race tyres, and then joining Lando in completing Pirelli’s test programme. We finished that in good time and are now looking forward to the rest of the US Grand Prix weekend.”

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