Piastri: “Antonelli impressive, we are improving”

McLaren improves but Kimi is unattainable Oscar Piastri, at least for one Friday afternoon, perhaps thought back to the first half of the 2025 season, when everything seemed to come easy to him and his McLaren was the car to beat. In FP2 of the Austrian GP, ​​at the Red Bull Ring, both the MCL40 and Piastri himself finally appeared in form: the Australian set the second best time of the session, doing better than teammate Lando Norris, but had to bow to a fantastic Andrea Kimi Antonelli, author of the best time, faster than Piastri’s by 237 thousandths. “For me it was a good day – commented Piastri at the end of the session, speaking to Sky Sport F1 – I think we are a step behind Mercedes or at least Kimi, which we expected. But it was a rather productive day. We tried a lot of things. We will have some work to do and we had it from Spain, especially as far as I’m concerned. But we managed to do, I think, a good job trying to improve some things”. As usual, however, Piastri did not want to overbalance himself too positively in view of the ‘hot’ phase of the weekend, indicating Mercedes and specifically Antonelli as the big favourites: “Get them closer? We’ll see. The fact that Kimi set that time on his second lap with the soft tires is truly impressive. So we have to wait to see if we can come up with something during the night. But there is certainly room for us drivers (McLaren) to learn from each other. We will try to apply what we will learn and see how it goes,” he concluded.

Automobile Magazine – Formula1 English, News

2026-06-27 02:36:00