McLaren appears between Mercedes and Ferrari. The reigning world champions, who were perhaps talked about too little during the winter, returned to the top of the standings at the end of the second free practice session of the Australian GP. Oscar Piastri, the idol of the local public, took the lead in front of everyone with the best time, leading Antonelli by two tenths and the English pair Russell-Hamilton by three tenths. Interviewed by Sky Sports at the end of the round, however, the third place finisher in the 2025 World Championship showed off realism, recognizing that the MCL40 is probably not yet the car to beat.
“The weekend started off reasonably – commented Piastri – FP2 went much better than FP1, but there are still many things to fine-tune. Everything is very different compared to last year. The session went smoothly, we managed to find good consistency. Let’s try to evaluate what we learned today, but I think everyone will make a good step forward tomorrow and we will have to try to grow too. We hope to be able to fight for the front rows, although I don’t know if we can do it for pole. I haven’t seen what the race pace situation is, but I’m not sure it’s as good as some of our rivals. The main objective now is to build some continuity”.
