‘No great ideas’ - McLaren faces tough Monaco GP rebound
Oscar Piastri admits he has no big ideas about how to improve McLaren's Monaco GP form
Oscar Piastri “doesn’t have any great ideas” on how to improve his McLaren following a difficult Friday at the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix.
The Australian was only eighth and 1.5s off the pacesetting Ferrari in FP1, and was then seventh in FP2, having reduced the margin to a second.
With his team-mate Lando Norris stopping early in the second session due to an issue, McLaren didn’t get all the information it wanted.
The situation was further complicated by the presence of additional upgrades, as well as experiments with the new front wing tried and then shelved in Montreal.
“It felt okay, just not as speedy as we would like, unfortunately,” said Oscar Piastri.
“So a bit of a difficult one. I think we made a bit of progress for FP2, but we went from a second and a half off to a second off, so it's been a tough day for us, for sure. So some things to find overnight definitely.
“We always expected Ferrari to be quick, and they look very, very quick as well. But yeah, we were hoping we would be a fair bit closer, so let's see what we can try and muster for tomorrow.”
Asked if he had any ideas on how to improve the car for Saturday he said: “Not massively.
“I think in today's F1, there's never anything you can do to turn the car completely upside down, so we'll try and find something for sure, because we need to, But yeah, I don't have any great ideas.”
Piastri said that finding more grip all around the lap was the main challenge.
“I think we're just lacking grip, mainly,” he said.
“When you look compared to the others, it's not really one place where we're struggling, or one type of corner, we're just struggling a little bit everywhere. So yeah, bit of a difficult day.
“We've obviously got the different rear wing, but we've been testing the front wing, it's been on and off both cars.
“We know the car that we've got, and we know that we're a step behind Mercedes, and we know or we expected Ferrari to be very strong here based on some of their strengths and weaknesses. But to be this far behind, we didn't expect that.”
In this article
Adam Cooper attended his first F1 race at Brands Hatch as a 10-year-old fan in 1976. He became a freelance journalist for Autosport magazine in 1985 while still at university, initially covering everything from club racing to the FIA World Sportscar Championship.
