Albert Park, Friday, 14 March

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

FP1	1m17.252s	21 laps	1st
FP2	1m16.580s (+0.141s)	30 laps	3rd

"A decent first day back in the car. Good feelings, all in all. We're struggling a lot with the balance, so we need to make a few changes to get it into a better place, but a good start to the weekend for us as a team. A good baseline, but a lot to improve on." 

FP1	1m17.670s (+0.418s)	20 laps	4th
FP2	1m16.563s (+0.124s)	30 laps	2nd

“It was a productive first day back for us, and it was pretty encouraging. We’ve still got some things to work on, but the pace was there. We’ve tried a few different things and gathered some good information, the car feels different to last year but that’s pretty normal. I am excited to see what we can do tomorrow – it’s been a pretty positive first day.”

“A relatively smooth session today without any major issues. This allowed us to run through our plan and to check the behaviour of the MCL39 here in Australia – which is a very different circuit to Bahrain, where we carried out winter testing. I think we’ve seen that the car behaves as expected, which is good news. Based on what we have seen today, we have some work to do in terms of optimisation but overall, it has been positive. 

“I think these first couple of sessions have confirmed the field is, if possible, even tighter than it was in the past, so from a competitive point of view, we look forward to another interesting Formula 1 season.”