McLaren’s Jolt
“It was a nice surprise for us“: McLaren team principal Andrea Stella did not hide his astonishment at Lando Norris‘ pole at the Hungarian GP. Already yesterday, the Woking single-seaters had seemed quite competitive and at the end of a good Saturday, the first pole position of the season arrived for the driver and the world champion team.
Stella sees red: “Ferrari is the favorite”
Andrea Stella then continued on Sky Sports Uk: “We brought some updates and we saw that they worked well. We took a couple of tenths off the car, but we never thought they would be enough to put us in pole position”.
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After seeing Friday’s long runs, however, Stella remains cautious: “Honestly, for the race, Ferrari remains the favorite. In qualifying, they didn’t improve on their second attempt, so I believe we left some performance on the table. We take the positive indications, but we must remain grounded. There is still a lot of work to do to consistently be in these positions”.
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Friday’s long runs
| Verstappen | Norris | Russell | Hamilton | Leclerc | Antonelli | Verstappen |
| Medium (+5 laps) | Medium (+4 laps) | Medium (+8 laps) | Medium (+9 laps) | Soft (+6 laps) | Soft (+4 laps) | Soft (+3 laps) |
| 1’24’’7 | 1’24’’3 | 1’24’’3 | 1’24’’4 | 1’23’’7 | 1’23’’7 | 1’23’’5 |
| 1’24’’1 | 1’24’’0 | 1’24’’4 | High | 1’23’’8 | 1’23’’7 | 1’24’’1 |
| 1’24’’1 | 1’24’’4 | 1’24’’0 | 1’24’’6* | High | 1’23’’9 | 1’25’’4* |
| 1’23’’9 | 1’23’’9 | 1’24’’0 | 1’24’’9* | 1’24’’2 | 1’24’’0 | 1’24’’1 |
| 1’25’’4 | 1’24’’8 | 1’24’’1 | 1’25’’2* | 1’26’’2* | 1’24’’1 | |
| High | 1’25’’1 | 1’24’’2 | 1’24’’0* | High | ||
| 1’26’’2 | 1’25’’4 | 1’25’’1 | 1’26’’5* | 1’24’’2 | ||
| 1’25’’4 | 1’25’’3 | High | 1’25’’9* | |||
| 1’25’’3 | 1’25’’4 | 1’24’’3 | ||||
| 1’26’’2 | 1’25’’8 | |||||
| High | ||||||
| 1’26’’5 |
