McLaren F1 Team team-mates Carlos Sainz Jr. and Lando Norris have called Friday’s practice day for the 2019 Spanish Grand Prix a “productive” and “smooth” day.
As with many of the teams in Barcelona, McLaren’s Friday was focused on various upgrades brought to the MCL34, a package with which Sainz says he felt good.
“That was a pretty smooth Friday for us, doing a comparison across the upgrades that we’ve brought to this race,” said Sainz. “I didn’t use the new package in FP1 and then ran it in FP2 to try to feel the reaction of the car.
“We now need to compare the data to understand the differences, but I felt good in the car this afternoon, even though the track was not in the best condition. I’m sure we can extract the maximum out of our package tomorrow and we’ll fight for the best position in quali.”
Lando Norris says the “small upgrades” have worked well but believe McLaren are still lacking pace in Barcelona. Sainz’s lap time of 1:19.155 in Practice 1 was as close as McLaren got to the held of the field, 1.204seconds off the pace.
“It’s been a good Friday but not amazing,” said Norris. “I could have driven better, especially in FP1, but I think we introduced our small upgrades reasonably well. They worked as intended so we’re happy about that.
“There’s still more pace we need to find, to be as strong as we want to be, but it hasn’t been a bad Friday. It’s been productive, we just need to find pace. The long run work looked reasonably good. If we can find a bit more pace on lower fuel, I think we could be reasonably happy going into qualifying.”
