AUSTIN — Zak Brown was the center of attention on Friday at the United States Grand Prix. During the FIA Press Conference Friday Brown sat alongside fellow team bosses Laurent Mekies from Visa Cash App RB F1 Team, and Oliver Oakes from Alpine, but almost every question went the McLaren CEO’s way. The reason? The Woking-based operation has stormed to the top of the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship standings, and with Lando Norris closing in on Max Verstappen atop the Drivers’ Championship standings, the media was seeking answers from the McLaren boss about how the team would close out the season.
Hours later, as Brown walked back to McLaren’s hospitality space following Sprint Qualifying, he was the one asking questions.
McLaren endured a difficult Friday Sprint Qualifying session, that saw Oscar Piastri eliminated in SQ1 when he had a lap time deleted for exceeding track limits. That left only Norris in the fight, and he turned in a lap only good enough for P4 in the end, a lap he described as “shocking” when speaking with the official F1 channel.
“Not very good, I’m P4. Not a great day, I’ve been struggling the whole day honestly with the balance and the set-up,” said Norris after qualifying. “In a way [I’m] happy with P4 because I feel like it could have been a lot worse, but my lap was shocking. So yeah, not a terrible day, it could have been worse, could have been better, but I’ll take it.”
Norris was not overly optimistic that he could fight up toward the front in the F1 Sprint Race on Saturday.
“I hope to go forward, that’s my plan, but on pace I think we are where we deserve to be today, so my plan is to go forward but I have no idea how much we can.”
As for Piastri, he was left to lament a mistake in the final sector that ended his day earlier than he expected.
“Most of the lap was good,” said Piastri after the session. “I made a few mistakes in the last sector, and obviously second to last corner I just tried to go a bit too fast and that’s the result. A shame, but if there’s one good thing about Sprint weekends it’s that we have another shot tomorrow.”
Asked about the MCL38, Piastri outlined that he does not think there is a problem with the car, but rather that McLaren’s rivals might have taken a step forward.
“It feels okay, maybe not quite as strong as what it has in the last few races,” said Piastri. “But I don’t think that’s because we’re weaker, I think the others seem a little bit stronger maybe.”
Team Principal Andrea Stella conceded that McLaren did not have the “smoothest day” in his post-session comments.
We didn’t have the smoothest day. Oscar had a lap deleted and was eliminated in SQ1 as a consequence. On Lando’s side of the garage, we were able to progress to SQ3 comfortably,” said Stella. “He looked like he was on course to set a very competitive lap, but a couple of issues in the final sector pushed him down to P4. It’s still a good position from which to score points, and we’ve also gathered good information that will allow us to extract a little bit more from the car while learning about the updates we have brought here to Austin.”
McLaren did bring several updates to Austin, along with several other teams. However, Norris did not point the finger at the upgrades in his comments to the media. “It’s not a new package, it’s pretty much the same,” said the McLaren driver.
He too seems to have more questions than answers at the moment.
