2026 Austrian Grand Prix – McLaren Qualifying Report

Red Bull Ring, Saturday, 27 June

Find out what happened during FP3 and Qualifying in Austria, and get the thoughts of McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Drivers Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, and Team Principal Andrea Stella.

McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team finished today’s Qualifying in the heat of Spielberg with the Number 1 car in P6 and the Number 81 car in P7. This demonstrated that despite taking to a circuit with different characteristics than those experienced in Barcelona, the competitive picture remained closely matched, with only fine margins separating the leading teams.

Today's Qualifying result, therefore, reflects the team’s current competitive position. Both drivers extracted the maximum from the MCL40’s current package with an acknowledgement that there remains a performance gap to the leading teams. The entire team, both trackside and in Woking, however, remains confident that the progress being made at the factory with patience will enable the team to consistently fight for Pole positions and race wins in the near future.

Free Practice 3, as is often the case, and particularly when track temperature is changing, was slow to start, with only one car circulating in the first 10 minutes, the rest waiting for the track to move a little closer to the conditions that would be seen in practice. Lando went out 15 minutes into the session, and Oscar 18 minutes. The big question was whether any of the presumptive top four teams would choose to use a Hard tyre or retain both sets for the race. Lando and Oscar both stuck with the consensus, using two sets of Soft tyres during the session. Both did multiple runs on each set, either doing a double-cool between laps, or returning to the garage.

The front-runners appeared tightly bunched after FP3, and as has been the way this season, made progress through Q1 relatively straightforward. Lando started with a strong lap that left him P2 after the first runs – but he picked up a little damage to one of the rear brake ducts. He stayed in the garage for the rest of the session due to a strong lap, meaning he didn’t need to run again while it was glued. Oscar’s first lap had room for improvement, and he went out again on a used tyre, but was able to abort his second run and return to the garage ahead of the Chequered Flag as the initial lap deemed him safe.

Q2 was more of the same. Oscar did a single run at the start of the session on a new tyre, and with a strong time, was able to stay in the garage for the rest of the session. Lando, having been in the garage for a while, elected to do a lap on a used tyre first. He then did a second run at the end of the session on a new tyre. Oscar finished the session seven-thousandths ahead of Lando.

Between the sessions, Lando’s crew used the time to replace his damaged rear brake duct, fast work getting the job done in time for the session. Both drivers had achieved the goal across Q1 and Q2, getting through those sessions using just two sets of Softs, leaving the final two sets for two attempts in Q3. Oscar had a strong opener, but Lando was a little off the pace. The tightness of the field magnified any slight twitch or slide. Both improved on their final runs: Lando finishing the session P6 and Oscar P7, separated by just nine-thousandths of a second. Consensus in the garage was that those were good laps, extracting the pace the MCL40 had to offer.

This is more or less where the team expected to be. Attention now turns to tomorrow. With a gap of just a tenth and a half to the front row, combined with an expectation of high degradation and multiple stops, the anticipation is for a competitive performance in Austria.

In the McLaren Driver Development Programme, having qualified P22, Matteo De Palo finished P19 in the FIA Formula 3 Sprint. The race was interrupted by a Safety Car at the start and a VSC later – but with track temperatures rising rapidly, tyre life played the biggest role in the result.

“Overall, it’s been a good day, and P6 is a result we aren't too far away with. It’s easy to look at the practice times and hope for more, but we know the cars ahead are strong as we’ve seen throughout the season. Realistically, this is probably where we currently are in the pack, but we have our strengths in the package that we’ll look to exploit, and we're close enough to be in the fight tomorrow.

"The race is going to be incredibly hot, and tyre degradation will be a major factor, much like it was in Barcelona. A lot can happen with strategy and pit stops, but if we can manage the race well and take advantage of any opportunities, we’ll be in condition to secure a good result.”

“P7. Today’s result feels like a realistic reflection of where we are at the moment. We did a good job of maximising our package, and the lap times between myself and Lando have been incredibly close all weekend, which suggests we extracted nearly everything we could from the car. Unfortunately, we're just missing that final bit of pace compared to our closest competitors. We can see Mercedes has an edge, and Ferrari are strong, so we know the areas we need to improve.

“Looking ahead to the race, it will be hot, so tyre management will be absolutely key, especially as the competition around us will be very tight on race pace. We will analyse everything overnight and see what we can do strategy-wise. We’ll give it our best and see what we can achieve.”

Andrea Stella

Team Principal

“Today's Qualifying result of P6 and P7 is a fair representation of where we stand at the moment. Lando and Oscar drove very well to extract that performance, but we are under no illusion that we have a gap to Mercedes and Ferrari. Our focus is clear: we need to continue the hard development work to add those crucial few tenths of a second in performance. We know we have to improve, particularly in aerodynamics and tyre exploitation, and this is a work in progress at McLaren.

“We are looking forward to the race and believe it is still a good position from which to fight for a strong result. The grid is incredibly tight, so tyre degradation and strategy will be significant variables that we will aim to exploit. While a victory may be out of reach on pure pace, we are confident in the work happening back at the factory and believe it's a matter of time and patience before we are consistently fighting for Pole positions and wins.”