26 May 2023 19:00 (UTC)
"Awesome to be back in the car here in Monaco"
Circuit de Monaco, Friday 26 May
Hear from McLaren Formula 1 drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and Team Principal Andrea Stella after practice for the Monaco Grand Prix.
FP1 | 1m14.467s (+1.095s) | 25 laps | 7th |
FP2 | 1m12.906s (+0.444s) | 18 laps | 5th |
“A reasonable day – it’s just lovely to be back. Awesome to be back in the car here in Monaco. Feels insane, as always. Good fun out there and got comfortable very quickly, which is always important here. We made a few changes from FP1 to FP2, which were in the right direction, and we definitely got a bit more out of the car, so we’ll continue to try to explore that direction, see if we can improve a little bit more into tomorrow. A decent Friday, and I’m probably feeling a little bit more comfortable than I have been the last few weeks.”
FP1 | 1m15.192s (+1.820s) | 32 laps | 17th |
FP2 | 1m13.673s (+1.211s) | 30 laps | 18th |
“First day in Monaco in an F1 car. It was a bit of a tricky day, it’s such a challenging circuit and I’ve got a bit of work to do on my side, but that’s what happens when you’re getting up to speed. I think I’ve got the best out of each corner at least once, I’ve just got to put them all together on a lap now. We’ll keep working overnight and see what we can do. The car looks to be in a reasonable place, but the field is so tight again, so small improvements can have a big impact. We’ll keep pushing and look to unlock more pace tomorrow.”
“We’ve had a decent first day of running in Monaco, despite a couple of issues on Lando’s side which ate into his track time in FP2 and high fuel laps. That aside, we worked through our programme as planned. Lando found a good rhythm relatively soon at low fuel. Oscar, making his first visit to Monaco in an F1 car, was rightly learning more and more run after run. From here, we’ll do all the usual Monaco things: keep optimising all the details with the drivers and on the car, do our best to execute our plan smoothly and put good laps together for qualifying and the race.”
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