Lando Norris concluded his opening day of running at Monza second in the pecking order, and while he was happy with his progress, the Briton felt that McLaren "isn't as good as it looks".
Norris ended FP1 seventh but clocked in just 0.019s behind Ferrari pace-setter Carlos Sainz in the afternoon session, with teammate Oscar Piastri slotting in fourth just behind Red Bull's Sergio Perez.
On paper, having both McLarens among the top four amounts to a good start for the Woking-based outfit.
But Norris played down the performance, insisting the result on his side of the garage was achieved on his final run in FP2.
"To begin the day not so good," he said as he reflected on his two sessions at the Temple of Speed. "Really, the only run we looked competitive was this final run, which makes us look very good, but I’d say we’re not as good as what it looks.
"I think with the other tyres, with the medium and the hard, we struggled quite a bit more.
"Also on the race runs we struggled quite a bit more than we did on the one-lap soft. It’s a C5, so it’s obviously a soft tyre and provides a lot of grip for one lap, which is always a good thing for us.
"I’m happy, we took some good steps forward and made some improvements today, but we’re definitely still not in a competitive enough place."
Like its rivals, McLaren has significantly fine-tuned its MCL60 package to suit Monza's low-downforce environment for this weekend's round of racing. But drag remains a weak point on the straights, in absolute and in relative terms.
"It’s clear where we’re still losing… The majority of it is still in the straights comparing to some of the other cars," Norris explained.
"The Ferrari is unbelievably quick in the straight, but I think we always expected them to be quick here, they have a good balance, in the very slow-speed corners they’re always very competitive, and they’re always slippery in the straights.
"I think we have a few ideas and things to work on. We took a good step forward between P1 to P2, so maybe a bit more of that, even though it’s not as easy as the step we did, a little bit more in that direction would be helpful."
On the other side of the McLaren garage, Piastri labeled his opening day as "decent", but said that his focus was more on Sunday's race than on Saturday's qualifying, although he expects to reach Q1 while managing tomorrow's Alternative Tyre Allocation that mandates that teams run hards in Q1, mediums in Q2 and softs in Q3.
"It feels reasonable," commented the Aussie. "I think whenever you come to Monza and take all the downforce off the car it never feels that nice, but our pace over one lap seems to be there or there abouts.
"I think we still have some things to work on. Qualifying is not the be all and end all here, so we really need to factor in Sunday as well. But yeah, a decent first day, tried a few things.
"We’ve got a few things we still need to figure out and improve on, but not a bad day.
"I think we’re quick enough to hopefully… [With the ATA] we should be able to do a good enough job to get out of Q1 and get into Q3.
"We’ll see how we go, but I think as long as we make it through to when we put softs on in Q3, then the car should be okay."
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