McLaren, Piastri: “We haven’t reached Ferrari’s level yet”

After the expectations of the day before, at home McLaren There is not much hope following what the Suzuka race revealed. The performances shown in qualifying, especially by Lando Norris, put the Woking team in position to fight for the podium. The pace shown in the overall doctor’s economy, however, showed how Ferrari is still a step ahead of race management.. McLaren, which finished fifth and eighth, therefore kept its red flag for the next race.

Norris and Piastri’s post-race emotions

“It was a tough race compared to the guys who had good speed,” explained Lando Norris, referring to the riders ahead of him at the finish line. “So everything went in favor of Red Bull and Ferrari. It’s not good to start in third place and then take a step back, but we tried our best. Charles did a great job throughout the GP. Information that shows that inside the garage we were also not expected to face the return of Charles Leclerc, who started from eighth place. After figuring this out McLaren decided to bring Norris’ first stopwithout however reaping the desired fruits: “We clashed first, which meant doing what Ferrari was doing. We’ll talk again if we did something better.” Norris also said he was disappointed when he looked at the comparison with the 2023 race: “Last year we scored in 19 seconds, now in 29 hours…”. Regret also reigns on Oscar Piastri’s side of the boxwho expected a Japanese doctor with different attitudes compared to what it was: “It is not true to fight for the positions we expected. We had no traffic around us and we need to understand why. I made a mistake at the last chicane, closing, “ commented the Australian about the final battle with Russell, in which he lost the position to the Mercedes driver. “I think today showed that we still have work to do. We haven’t reached Ferrari’s level yet. It wasn’t a good weekend for me either, so I have to look at it from my point of view as well.

Andrea Stella: “The ranking shows the speed of the race”

Also the head of the McLaren team Andrea Stella he insisted need to make progress in front of the speed of the race: “I think the final classification shows the order of the pace. We thought the podium was possible with an early stop, but when the race was going on we saw that there was not enough speed in the car.” So Stella insisted as a hub that allowed Ferrari closing in front of their cars, and being relegated to the best speed of the red team, although the Maranello team has also done a very good job in the strategic layer. “We know the performance is not the best, but there is work to be done and updates are on the way. Charles did a great job with one station. It was good for Ferrari to make the tires lastbut today it wasn’t an hour or two, it was a good drive.”