Norris encouraged by McLaren’s start in Austria as Piastri identifies external ‘threat’ for pole

McLaren enjoyed a strong start to the Austrian Grand Prix weekend after Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri set the pace during Friday’s second practice session.

Norris missed the opening session to give F2 racer and McLaren junior Alex Dunne a run in the MCL39, but the Briton was immediately on the pace when he returned to action in FP2.

Norris’ best time of 1m 04.580s put him 0.157s up on team mate Piastri, with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen more than three-tenths of a second back at one of the shortest tracks on the calendar.

Assessing his and the team’s first day at the Red Bull Ring, Norris said: “I think the car felt good from the off. Alex gave good feedback this morning after FP1 and he was on the pace straight away, so that was good to see.

“I think they moved the car in the right direction for FP2, and we just need to understand if we want more of that tomorrow, or a little bit less, or somewhere in the middle.

“Good steps in the right direction, but still a little bit more to come hopefully.”

Norris does, however, expect McLaren’s rivals to turn up the heat as the weekend progresses – predicting a “tight” battle for pole position.

“I think as a team we seemed a bit more competitive,” he continued. “I think we definitely didn’t look that good this morning, so I think we did move things in the right direction.

“I think as always we are very quick in FP2 at times [and] we’ve shown a bit more pace than some of the others. I certainly think they’re going to catch up, Max is not far behind, and they [Red Bull] normally improve a lot into Saturday.

“I expect a good day tomorrow and I’m sure we’ll improve on some things, but it’s not as easy as maybe it looked today. I think it’s still going to be tight tomorrow, it always is, there’s no reason for it not to be, but we’ll work hard to make it as big of a gap as possible.”

Piastri echoed Norris’ comments about McLaren’s early pace and what their rivals might be able to do overnight, earmarking Verstappen as a particular “threat” in Qualifying.

“It looked pretty good,” Piastri commented. “Max is still close, so I think he’ll be definitely a threat this weekend. But no, the car’s feeling good, I think the pace is quite good, so a positive first day.”

With Norris reporting that McLaren’s recent upgrades have moved the car “in the right direction”, Piastri also gave his take on the developments – and whether he is using the new front suspension debuted by Norris in Montreal.

“There’s some other bits and pieces… I’m not using the bits that came in Canada, because they’re not an upgrade, they’re just different,” he confirmed. “All the parts that we think will make the car faster are on both cars.”