Piastri: McLaren still 'a step behind' Mercedes and Ferrari despite strong Friday pace

Oscar Piastri set the fastest time in Friday practice at his home Australian Grand Prix but immediately tempered expectations, insisting McLaren remains "a little step behind" rivals Mercedes and Ferrari. The session highlighted the team's ongoing struggle for consistency with its new 2026 car, with teammate Lando Norris over a second slower in a disjointed day.

Why it matters:

In the new 2026 regulatory era, unlocking a car's ultimate pace is only half the battle; the other half is achieving consistent, predictable operation. Piastri's comments underscore that raw speed on a single lap may not translate to race-winning performance if a team cannot reliably extract 100% from its package, a challenge that could define the early pecking order.

The details:

• Piastri topped FP2 at Albert Park but described FP1 as "by far the trickiest and most complicated session I’ve ever had," citing reliability issues that affected both cars.
• Performance improved markedly in FP2 as operations smoothed out, allowing Piastri to find "a huge amount of lap time" simply by getting the car to behave as expected.
• Despite the headline time, Piastri suspects the true competitive gap remains. "I always felt that we were only a little step behind... I'm not sure what our long run pace looked like," he stated, emphasizing the need to get everything into an "optimal place."
• The other side of the garage had a starkly different Friday. Reigning champion Lando Norris managed only seven laps in FP1 and finished FP2 seventh, a full second off Piastri's pace, highlighting the car's current sensitivity and the team's work to dial it in.

What's next:

All eyes turn to qualifying, where precision and traffic management will be critical.

• Norris said the team is in a "reasonable position" regarding setup and will review overnight to find steps forward in car setup, tires, and power unit management.
• Piastri's analysis suggests McLaren's Saturday performance will hinge less on outright pace and more on execution and optimization. If the team can achieve the consistency it found in FP2, it could be in the fight for the top rows, but beating the established top teams over a race distance remains the larger, unanswered question.