It was very much an up and down day for McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri on the first day of practice for 2024 at the Bahrain International Circuit.
Norris was second quickest in the daytime FP1 session, his time of 1:32.901s just a fraction off that of overall pace setter Daniel Ricciardo in the RB, while Piastri was third fastest.
But only those two teams opted to use a set of soft tyres in the first hour, and it was a very different picture in the evening session where Piastri was fifth fastest but Norris ended up slowest of anyone.
That was because running one set of softs in FP1 had left them with just one to use in the more representative evening conditions. Norris made a mistake on his flying lap, and hence was unable to set a representative time as a result.
“Not my best day," admitted Norris afterward. "A bit messy from my part. I just didn’t put everything together at all times, but hopefully I got that out of the way and can do a better job tomorrow.
"We tried some things, and we progressed with understanding the car a bit more. So yeah, progress made, but plenty of things to try and improve on tomorrow," he continued.
Piastri was much more satisfied with how things went, saying that the MCL38 "felt good, both in those qualifying style runs and those race runs" in the evening practice.
“I think we are in a decent place. I think we are more or less where we thought," he reported. "There are some runs we need to look at in more details as to why they were how they were, both good and bad.
"I think the overall feeling of the day was pretty positive," he said. “I think we are kind of in the mix.
"Red Bull don’t look quite as quick as we thought [but[ we’ll see how many sandbags come out tomorrow,” he added.
“It’s a lot closer than I expected: Mercedes look quick, Fernando [Alonso] looks quick. So yeah, always a bit hard to judge on a Friday, but I think we are around the points.”
"It’s still clear that Red Bull are towards the top, Ferrari and close and Mercedes were always the question mark," agreed Norris. “They were never going to be bad.
"It always gets closer especially in qualifying - even the Haas is up there, and they apparently didn’t change the car at all! " he added. "I think it’s going to be a tricky qualifying no matter what.
“Whatever we can get out of the car we need to get out,” he pointed out, with just over half a second separating the six different teams comprising the top seven at the end in FP2.
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