McLaren monopolizes the second row but fails (for now) the new wing

Awakening in SQ3 but the new winger doesn’t play Protagonists when it mattered most. After an uphill Friday, in which they seemed to be behind not only the Mercedes but also the Ferraris, the two McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri raised their heads again in the decisive moment of the Sprint Qualifying. In fact, in SQ3 the Englishman and the Australian managed to grab the second row, relegating the two red single-seaters of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc to third. This was probably the best possible result for the papaya team to achieve, given that the updates brought by Mercedes seem to have once again made the W17 unapproachable. The downside, however, in the Woking team, is the at least temporary failure of the new front wing brought to Montreal this weekend: “After FP1 we returned to the old configuration of the front wing – admitted technical director Neil Houldey – during the session we found that the front wing did not offer the performance we expected and, ultimately, we decided to use the previous configuration, which gave the drivers greater confidence and allowed them to obtain better performances”. The words of Norris and Piastri “Considering how the morning went, third place is an excellent result and represents a nice turnaround – commented world champion Lando Norris – we were afraid of being off the pace and I didn’t have much confidence in the car, but we made some changes that allowed us to take a clear step forward. For Sprint Qualifying we went back to the front wing with the previous specifications, which gave me a little more confidence. The lap was decent, I could have pushed a a little more, but the gap to the leaders wasn’t that big, which is encouraging. I’m proud of the team for reacting quickly and doing a great job in difficult conditions – added the English champion – the upgrade package is working well, some parts, mainly the front wing, still need more time and we may reintroduce them later. That said, the rest of the car worked well and, for the first time this weekend, I felt really confident in SQ3 on the soft tyres and we will continue to refine from here on out.” Similar were the observations of Oscar Piastri, who recorded the fourth fastest time, just 19 thousandths of a second behind Norris: “I’m relatively satisfied – declared the Australian at the end of the session – we made the most of our possibilities, especially after a rather chaotic first free practice session, with delays and red flags that prevented us from dedicating as much time as we would have liked to analyzing the data. The Mercedes seem competitive with their new package, so we still have some work to do to improve performance and close the gap. Thanks to the team for the work done in preparing the new parts for Canada. It was an important package to fine-tune and we still have some work to do on the front wing: in the end we ran with the previous one in the Sprint qualifying because we felt more comfortable with it. Let’s see what we can do in the Sprint and what we can optimize for the Grand Prix qualifying.”

Automobile Magazine – F1 English News , 2026-05-23 17:21:00