Papaya in trouble
The weekend of the 1000th F1 GP starts decidedly badly for McLaren. In Monte Carlo, Friday was far from ideal for both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. The papaya single-seaters left much to be desired both in terms of reliability (read: the problems that stopped the reigning world champion in FP2) and speed: in the afternoon session, Piastri, despite improving compared to FP1, did not go beyond seventh place, taking a full second from Lewis Hamilton’s best time. A gap that surprised, negatively, the Woking team.
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Piastri and Norris unhappy
“Today was definitely a difficult day for the team – Piastri admitted to reporters, not hiding – we are not where we want to be and the gap to the front is bigger than we hoped. We made some small steps forward between the first and second free practice sessions, but we are still a second slower, which shows how much work we have to do. We need to analyze the data and find some answers overnight because, as it stands, we are simply not fast enough. There isn’t a single solution that can completely turn the situation around, but we will explore every available option to improve performance and be in a more competitive position for the rest of the weekend“.
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Norris appeared equally unhappy, especially for having to give up running for a good part of the FP2 session: “Difficult day – commented the Briton – we are clearly off the pace and need to make up time throughout the lap. The problem in FP2? It’s always frustrating to lose the chance to run on track, especially because it’s always important here in Monaco. The car simply switched off, so we need to investigate what happened. We will work hard overnight to try and get more performance from the car, but realistically it will be difficult to compete at the front this weekend, given our position relative to the competition. It’s not necessarily a surprise, but it’s not where we want to be, so we will work hard to understand what we are missing and try to recover where possible ahead of tomorrow”.
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