McLaren learns a valuable lesson: 'Cost us several grid positions'
F1 News
In the end, a P3 for Oscar Piastri and a P6 for Lando Norris, were not the results McLaren was hoping to wrap up its sprint qualifying session in China with, as a disappointed Andrea Stella admits.
"Our first day back here in China ends with a somewhat disappointing result in Sprint Qualifying", the Italian begins in a McLaren press release. "During Free Practice we managed to work through our run plan well, completing a lot of important items as we head into this Sprint weekend," and while McLaren did show early signs of dominance with Lando Norris leading the the session with a half a second margin, the story drastically changed during sprint qualifying.
McLaren learns a valuable lesson
"However, we struggled to put perfect laps together in SQ3 today, and thus we were not able to capitalise on the good pace of the car. This serves as a reminder of the competitive nature of this field, where not fully extracting performance can cost us several grid positions." Whereas prior to the short qualifier everyone had McLaren pegged to take pole position, they couldn't even reach the front row with Lewis Hamilton and Max Versappen finishing in P1 and P2 respectively.
Nevertheless, Stella looks forward to tomorrow's race with one goal in mind. "We now have the chance to use the information available to maximise the
pace in the car, ensuring we are prepared starting from the Sprint tomorrow.”