2023 Italian Grand Prix – free practice “Overall, it’s been a productive Friday here at Monza"

Autodromo Nazionale Monza, Friday, 1 September

Hear from McLaren Formula 1 drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and Team Principal Andrea Stella after practice for the Italian Grand Prix.

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FP1 1m23.241s (+0.584s) 22 laps 7th
FP2 1m21.374s (+0.019s) 20 laps 2nd

"A good day in terms of progress made. I don’t think we started off in the best position but we made a few good changes and it’s definitely helped us with our overall pace, which is a good thing. However, we’re still a little way off being as competitive as we want to be. We’ll work hard overnight to try and improve on that, and we have a few ideas. But a nice way to end the day, and if we can find some more, I’ll be confident we can have a decent result."

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FP1 1m23.446s (+0.789s) 24 laps 11th
FP2 1m21.545s (+0.190s) 21 laps 4th

"End of Friday, and we’ve had a reasonable day. I think we have some things still to work on and improve on, but the one-lap pace seems to be quite reasonable. Let’s see how we go, there are some things to analyse but not a bad first day."

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"Overall, it’s been a productive Friday here at Monza. Red flags aside, we were able to work smoothly through our programme, making comparisons between rear wing levels as we try and achieve the right top speed. The data looks encouraging, and tonight we’ll pick what we believe is going to be the most appropriate configuration for the rest of the weekend. We also had a good look at all three tyre compounds, each of which will be used in the Alternative Tyre Allocation qualifying format tomorrow. Ahead of that we have a busy night, binding together everything we’ve discovered today, preparing as best we can for qualifying and the race."

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