McLaren F1’s Executive Director of Racing Andrea Stella says that the team can be relatively happy with how their opening day of the Qatar Grand Prix at the Losail International Circuit went as Lando Norris ended the day in 5th place while Daniel Ricciardo was 14th and speaking following the action, Stella said:
“Overall, we’re relatively happy after our first day in Qatar. The track is fast, flowing and the drivers are enjoying it. Losail provides some challenges from a car set-up point of view, and because some of the kerbs are very aggressive. Some teams have experienced problems with those, us included, and we’ll try to address that overnight. We have plenty of analysis to do before tomorrow, but we’re looking forward to qualifying and the race. Several cars seem to be in good shape, but we’re eager to have a strong showing here.”
Daniel Ricciardo spoke about his day in the car saying:
“This track’s fun. The initial impressions are that it’s good with it being flowing and pretty fast. We didn’t really progress in the second session. We changed the car a bit to experiment with a few things, but it was probably two steps off, so we’ve still got a bit to find there. Lando was more promising and we can learn a bit from that car. I was a bit off in the first sector so got some work to do there – but I’m not concerned, just a few things to look into tonight. Competitiveness-wise, I think Ferrari will be there tomorrow and Alpha Tauri looked quick. Hopefully we can find a bit more for Saturday.”
Lando Norris who was able to extract impressive pace from the McLaren today commented saying:
“A good start to the weekend. In a way, more positive than we were expecting, I think because of the type of track layout we have here. I think we were anticipating a few more problems and possibly difficulties than we had. I think there are still some weaknesses we’ve got to work on, but on the whole a solid start. I like the track, it’s good fun, especially being a night session as well – we haven’t had a night session in quite a while. It’s fast, it’s high-speed and it’s a good challenge.”