McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari are all targeting challenging for pole position on Friday night at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, after a disjointed Thursday of practice.
Red flags for a suspected loose manhole cover limited some of the late running in FP2 as the track continued to evolve at a high rate, meaning a number of teams did not do a soft tire lap to gauge potential qualifying performance on the opening day of track running. It was Lando Norris who topped the times in the second session at a track McLaren struggled on last season, and the championship leader feels he is in better shape this year.
“I think we have a better feeling in the car than what we had last year, so that’s a positive, and that was felt already from like lap one,” Norris said. “So some good feelings.
“Of course, not a lot of running in the end, not really any high fuel running, but the pace clearly is there. I think it’s pretty tight between a lot of people, and many people didn’t even get their laps in, so apart from that, I think we made some steps forward from FP1 to FP2, and hopefully we can just do some more from FP2 to FP3.”
Aside from teammate Oscar Piastri, Norris’ other title rival is Max Verstappen, who believes Red Bull has a little bit of work to do but is not out of the running either.
“It’s been OK,” Verstappen said. “It’s just a bit difficult to understand what to do with these interruptions. I think we still need to improve a little bit to find a bit more grip out there. Also, the track, of course, is improving quite a bit every session. So we’ll try to just focus on that, seeing how we can operate the tires for qualifying and the race.
“It’s a lot colder here [than other low-downforce tracks Red Bull has been strong on] and the surface is very slippery. So, you cannot compare them to other tracks just because it’s low downforce. So, it’s not a given that you’re going quick here.”
Russell feels Mercedes is in the mix, but he’ll have to pull out all the stops to duplicate his 2024 Vegas success. Sam Bagnall/Getty Images
Mercedes dominated in Las Vegas last year, and while George Russell was not predicting a repeat performance he believes the team is in the fight once again.
“I think we’re in the mix,” Russell said. “I think we had to be realistic. There was a lot of expectations on us coming into this weekend but we’ve changed the car a lot since last year. That’s definitely made it a better car over the course of the season – maybe hasn’t made it as competitive as we were here 12 months ago, but it was close.
“There was a lot of [competition]. Lando was quick. Verstappen and [Charles] Leclerc were quick in FP1. Kimi [Antonelli] was quick. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of teams brought some small changes to their car for this weekend based on how good we were here last year. So, as I said, I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. We weren’t exactly setting the timing sheets on fire, so we’ve got to be realistic. We’re there or thereabouts, but definitely not a slam dunk.”
With Leclerc topping FP1 before a late stoppage on Thursday night, the Ferrari driver also sees a four-way fight developing ahead of Friday’s track running.
“I think, honestly, we are not in a bad place but we need to wait and see,” Leclerc said. “I think the Mercedes is very strong and obviously McLaren and Red Bull are also in the fight, so I think it’s going to be tight. I just hope we can build from now and be in the fight for for pole.
“But it’s been a positive day. I think the pace was strong … It’s all about trying to anticipate what the conditions will be like [on Friday] and make sure that we start on the right foot but I have pretty clear ideas of what I want to do with the car to try and improve it and we’ll see if these were the right choices.”
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