2024 Austrian Grand Prix – Sprint and GP Qualifying report "We’re usually stronger in races than we are in Qualifying, so I’m excited"

Red Bull Ring​​​​​​, Saturday, 29 June

Hear from McLaren Formula 1 drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, as well as Team Principal Andrea Stella, after the F1 Sprint and Qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix.

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Started 2nd  
Finished 3rd  
Fastest lap 1m08.935s, Lap 2 (1st)  
Q1 1m05.450s (Softs) 4th
Q2 1m05.103s (Softs) 6th
Q3 1m04.718s (Softs) 2nd

“It was nice to score a strong number of points as a team in this morning’s Sprint. The car felt good which gave us confidence going into the Quali session, and despite the tricky conditions, I’m happy to be on the front row again as Max was clearly quicker than us today.  

“Looking to tomorrow, we’re going to need to find a little extra to beat the pace of the Red Bulls but we’re usually stronger in races than we are in Qualifying, so I’m excited and we’ll try our best.” 

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Started 3rd  
Finished 2nd  
Fastest lap 1m08.980s Lap 2 (+0.045s, 2nd)  
Q1 1m05.311s (Softs) 2nd
Q2 1m05.070s (Softs) 5th
Q3 1m05.048s (Softs) 7th

“It was great to score some important points in the Sprint this morning, it was an interesting race and our pace as a team looked strong. Turning to Qualifying, it’s disappointing to have had my lap deleted due to track limits, a decision that I find quite surprising. My attention is now on gaining places from P7 in tomorrow’s race. We’ll work hard overnight to see where we can make some small improvements and head into Sunday ready to score strong points for the team.”  

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Get set for the British Grand Prix

Andrea Stella

“After a positive result in the Sprint where we scored a good haul of points, we needed to go again for the Qualifying session, which proved to be trickier than Sprint Quali yesterday. It was tough to put good laps together. Lando and Oscar did a very good job of maximising what was available. Oscar had his best lap in Q3 - which was worth a P3 starting position - deleted by what looks to be a questionable approach to enforcing track limits. Especially, in a place like Turn 6, in which track limits are enforced by the track configuration itself. It’s a long race and we will do our best to finish higher than the current P7 spot on the grid. For Lando, P2 gives him real opportunities. We were competitive in the Sprint today and hopefully can find a way to go one better in tomorrow’s Austrian Grand Prix.”