2023 Spanish Grand Prix "Our pace in quali didn’t translate to the race"
Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Sunday 4 June
Hear from McLaren Formula 1 drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and Team Principal Andrea Stella after the Spanish Grand Prix.
As it happened
• Contact between Lando and Hamilton on the opening lap means Lando tumbles down the field. Oscar loses two places, leaving him P12
• Lando pits, replacing his damaged front wing, and swaps to Hard tyres. He comes out in last position
• Oscar moves up the pack and slots into P8
• The pit window opens. Oscar boxes for the Hard tyres and comes out in P15, and Lando swaps to the Medium tyres
• We reach the halfway point, and Oscar and Lando are in P11 and P20, respectively
• Cars pitting off ahead of Oscar shuffles him up to P7
• Oscar boxes and swaps to Medium tyres. He's P12 with 27 laps to go
• After moving up the grid to P15, Lando boxes for Soft tyres. He comes out in P19
• Oscar drops to P13, passed by Leclerc. Lando passes Sargeant and Magnussen
• The chequered flag waves. Oscar finishes P13, and Lando P17

Started | 9th [Due to grid penalty for GAS] |
Finished | 13th |
Fastest lap | 1m18.679s on lap 41 (13th) |
Pit-stops | 2, lap 17 [Used Soft/New Hard] (2.5s) and lap 39 [Hard/New Medium] (3.1s) |
“It was a disappointing afternoon. Our pace in quali didn’t translate to the race, so it was tough. But it’s important we focus on taking the positives from Saturday’s quali result where our one-lap pace looked very strong. We now just need to work on the race pace as we head to Canada in two weeks’ time.”

Started | 3rd |
Finished | 17th |
Fastest lap | 1m17.182s on lap 55 (4th) |
Pit-stops | 3, lap 1 [Used Soft/New Hard] (17.6s front wing change), lap 22 [Hard/New Medium] (3.1s) and lap 50 [Medium/Used Soft] (2.3s) |
"Today we had a difficult afternoon. We just didn’t have the pace, compared to what we had yesterday, which is more or less what we expected, so it was difficult for us. At the start I didn’t see the Red Bull go off track, misjudged how much the cars in front were going to check up and I just clipped the front wing. It was the smallest of touches, but it cost us a lot, although I don’t think we would have finished in the points anyway. It was a difficult day for us as a team, but we’ll keep working hard to try to improve."

“Following a very positive qualifying session, today’s Spanish Grand Prix was a more realistic showing of our current competitiveness. We knew it would be more difficult to perform at the top of the field on race pace today given the hotter conditions. The situation was compounded by contact on the first lap between Lando and Lewis Hamilton, which resulted in Lando pitting for a new front wing and falling 30 seconds behind the field.
“I would like to praise the team today. Despite a difficult position, both Lando and Oscar both kept pushing, their engineering teams put in maximum effort to extract everything from the cars, and the garage crew delivered good pit-stops. Back at the factory, everyone is working hard to deliver upgrades and looking to the future when we hope to be fighting for more competitive positions.”




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