Qualifying Australia, McLaren starts from the third row
In Formula 1 hierarchies can change very quickly. McLaren, for example, has been the point of reference for the Circus for the last year and a half, but will begin the 2026 World Championship occupying the third row, eight tenths behind Mercedes. In Woking, however, they are not worried: the gap recovered in the previous technical cycle was much wider, furthermore the MCL40 confirmed its solidity, achieving a result in line with the expectations of the day before.
Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris managed all phases of the session without any particular flaws and were both consistent. The world champion was particularly unlucky, as in Q3 he hit a piece of debris brought onto the track by Kimi Antonelli: in Woking they believe that the episode caused a small damage to the front wing of the MCL40. It is difficult to quantify it on the flying lap, but with 172 thousandths of a gap from Isack Hadjar it is reasonable to think that the potential for P3 was there.
Piastri’s words
“It was a good qualifying session. It went pretty smooth and we are more or less where we thought we would be in the group, we just lacked a little performance“, this is the comment of the “landlord” Piastri. “I think third place was within our reach today, but we are learning every lap with these new cars. It’s a good base to build on and we’ll see what we can do to get on the podium tomorrow“.
Norris’s words
“Overall, I think sixth place is a reasonable starting position for tomorrow, considering some of the problems we had before qualifying“, added the world champion. “I’m not happy with sixth place and I think third was within our reachconsidering we lost a bit of performance after hitting some debris. However, having lost a lot of time in FP1 yesterday, plus some of the other difficulties we’ve faced so far this weekend, it’s not a bad starting position. We are in the game, which is where we wanted to be, we will prepare for tomorrow and focus on doing everything we can to move forward“.
