Australia Qualifying, McLaren starts from the third row
In Formula 1, hierarchies can change very quickly. McLaren, for example, has been the benchmark of the Circus for the last year and a half, but will start the 2026 World Championship occupying the third row, eight-tenths behind Mercedes. In Woking, however, they are not worried: after all, the gap recovered in the previous technical cycle was much larger, and furthermore, the MCL40 confirmed its solidity, achieving a result in line with expectations on the eve of the race.
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Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris managed all phases of the session without any particular mistakes and were both consistent. The world champion was particularly unlucky, hitting debris brought onto the track by Kimi Antonelli in Q3: in Woking, they believe the incident caused minor damage to the front wing of the MCL40. It’s difficult to quantify it over a single lap, but with a 172-millisecond gap from Isack Hadjar, it’s reasonable to think that P3 potential was there.
Piastri’s words
“It was a good qualifying session. It went quite smoothly and we are more or less where we thought we would be in the pack, we just lacked a bit of performance“, this was the comment from “home hero” Piastri. “I think third place was within our reach today, but we are learning on every lap with these new cars. It’s a good base to build on and we’ll see what we can do to get on the podium tomorrow“.
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Norris’s words
“Overall, I think sixth place is a reasonable starting position for tomorrow, considering some of the issues we had before qualifying“, added the world champion. “I’m not happy with sixth place and I think third was within our reach, considering we lost some performance after hitting debris. However, having lost a lot of time in yesterday’s FP1, in addition to some of the other difficulties we’ve faced so far this weekend, it’s not a bad starting position. We are in the game, which is where we wanted to be, we will prepare for tomorrow and focus on doing everything we can to move forward“.
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