Piastri sees ‘a lot up for grabs’ for McLaren in Hungary despite ‘very challenging’ first day

Oscar Piastri is optimistic about there being “a lot up for grabs” for himself and McLaren as the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend develops, with the squad’s upgrades “working as expected” on team mate Lando Norris’ car.

Most of the F1 field struggled for grip across Friday’s pair of practice sessions around the resurfaced and dusty Hungaroring track, leading to various lock-ups, wide moments and a crash for Alpine’s Franco Colapinto.

Piastri’s efforts to get up to speed were made more difficult after he sat out FP1 for McLaren reserve driver Leonardo Fornaroli – the Australian jumping into the cockpit in FP2 and winding up eighth fastest.

However, Piastri did not run the full update package used by Norris, who posted the third-quickest time of the day behind pace-setting Ferrari drivers Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.

Summing up his afternoon at the wheel, Piastri said: “Very, very challenging, for sure. I think the track conditions are pretty challenging out there – it’s very windy.

“It’s just a very challenging circuit at the moment, and obviously missing a practice session has made it pretty tough.”

Pushed on McLaren’s upgrades, Piastri noted: “I didn’t have them today. I think on Lando’s car they’ve been working as expected, which is good. I don’t think they’ve completely changed the car, which obviously we weren’t expecting, but would have been nice.

“We’ll see what it’s like on my car tomorrow and hopefully we can have a successful day.”

In terms of the competitive order, he added: “I think the Ferraris looked very quick in both sessions. I think Lando looked competitive in that one [FP2] especially. I think the Mercedes is very hard to read, so let’s wait and see tomorrow.

“I think if we execute a good day, it seems like there can be a lot up for grabs.”

Randy Singh, McLaren’s Senior Director of Racing, shared some more insight into the changes made to the MCL40, and the outfit’s hopes that they will ultimately cut the gap to the front of the grid.

“All the upgrades, really, have delivered as we expected, which is the most positive thing that we can say,” he said.

“Today, Oscar ran the old floor in P2, just so we could compare across cars, so tomorrow Oscar will have the new floor as well.

“I’m looking forward to seeing where we end up tomorrow. The gap to whoever’s been quickest in Qualifying or in the race has been a bit bigger in recent races, so we always knew that we weren’t going to close that gap in one go, but hopefully we’ve made a good step to doing so.”