DRIVERS
1 – Lando NORRIS (McLaren)
2 – Oscar PIASTRI (McLaren)
3 – Charles LECLERC (Ferrari)
TRACK INTERVIEWS
(Conducted by David Coulthard)
Q: We’ve just heard from Brian Tyler, the composer of the F1 theme tune. He’s just given a world debut of the remix, “We Are Dreaming”. So let’s ask Charles Leclerc whether you dreamed you could finish third here in the Sprint race. It’s been, I’d say, a challenging start to the season, but the upgrades have really worked well and we saw you pushing hard against Oscar right towards the end of the race there.
Charles LECLERC: Yeah, no, the upgrades worked well. I mean, it’s thanks to the team that has done a massive work over these five weeks of break, but I’m satisfied with that. Unfortunately, I’m not satisfied with P3, though. Obviously, we wish we were a little bit higher, but McLaren brought significant upgrades as well and did a big step forward, but we are not too far. So, I think for tomorrow, if we put everything together, maybe we can start a bit higher and that will make our life a little bit easy.
Q: That’s the nature of a racing driver, never to be happy, but you’ve got some good points there and it’s my pleasure to give you your award for finishing third in the Sprint. Thank you very much. Enjoy that. So, Oscar, we had the opportunity to speak just ahead of the race and you were pretty positive with the way qualifying went. These upgrades have been working and you had your eye very much in moving forward. So, satisfied with the seven points for second?
Oscar PIASTRI: Yes, I think mostly. It was obviously a little bit difficult to try and stay with Lando, but overall, it’s a good day, or a good morning obviously. So yeah, we’ll try and see what we can do for qualifying. I think everyone else will learn a lot, and so will we, so hopefully we can maintain that through the rest of the weekend.
Q: And ladies and gentlemen, the winner of the Sprint, on a track that has been very kind to you in the past, Lando Norris. Congratulations. Put us in the cockpit. Nineteen hot laps, but you had it under control right from the very start.
Lando NORRIS: Yes, no, it was a good race, good race. Nice to be back on the top step, even if it’s a Sprint, but a good day for us. A massive job to the team in bringing the upgrades. I know it feels like everyone’s saying the same thing, but ours have really helped this weekend. So happy to get it done for the team, but it’s hot. It was hot out there, it was sweaty. I was still pushing. I was trying to find that balance of pushing but also being quite relaxed and not making mistakes. So good start to the weekend, but now I have to do it all over again.
Q: Well, you do indeed. You’ve got to qualify this evening. How much of what you’ve just learned there, good points on the board with the Sprint win, where is your mind? You’re always moving forward, so are you looking at making many adjustments for the car going into main qualifying later?
LN: Probably not too many. If it works, if it’s not broken, then I don’t know what that is, but anyway, it has worked so far. So, we’ll probably change a couple of things. There’s a couple of things I wanted different from yesterday that we’ll adjust. So hopefully we have a little bit more to come, but I’m sure the others will too. So, we’ll just keep our head down and keep pushing.
PRESS CONFERENCE
Q: Many congratulations. Lando, great race. After a couple of P5s this year, just how sweet does it feel to be back in the winner’s enclosure?
LN: I mean, it feels good. It feels good. The thing that really feels good is just the car, obviously. It’s all relative. It doesn’t feel amazing on track, but it’s quick and we’ve made some good steps forward. So, I think that’s the thing that makes us happier, really, is of course the result, but just the fact that we can be quick again and push, and we can be a bit more consistently quick. I think there were moments this year where, you know, Oscar has demonstrated and we’ve demonstrated that we can be fast and there or thereabouts, but just not consistent. This weekend we seem to just be there from the off. So, you know, plenty of positives and, yeah, the perfect way to start the weekend with a pole yesterday and a win today. So still a tough race, a long race, hot, so you have to manage a lot of things, but I could keep it calm and pretty straightforward.
Q: You say you’re managing a lot of things. Were there any dramas for you?
LN: No, it’s probably the first weekend all year that I’ve just not had any dramas, touch wood. So, you know, it’s just been quite a straightforward weekend in general for me. I could just go out and do my programmes and just learn from the beginning, you know, and not ever feel like I’m a step behind things. So, I feel like I’ve been almost the opposite and a step ahead, and that’s paid dividends through the weekend so far. Of course, everyone’s catching up and it’s going to get tougher and tougher, but no, no dramas this weekend, so I’m happy. The team has done a good job. Of course, part of racing is reliability and making sure things are working as they should, and so far this weekend that has happened and we’ll continue to do that.
Q: All right. Very well done to you. Thank you, Lando. Oscar, let’s come to you. Another McLaren one-two in the Sprint here in Miami. Look, after gaining a position at the start, how was the pace for you?
OP: It was reasonable. I think, you know, clearly there was a little bit still to find and try and extract, but yeah, as Lando said, you know, the car’s been a really good step forward this weekend and, yeah, to be able to have that kind of pace today and yesterday as well has been a welcome return to form. So now I’ve just got to try and keep it going, obviously, but yeah, good start to the weekend and good start to the day.
Q: And it was a good start for you as well? Equally good as Charles.
OP: Yeah, I felt like it was a good launch. Yeah, got myself ahead of Kimi, which was the plan, obviously, and yeah, then, you know, after that point just tried to settle into the rhythm and that was good. But yeah, the launches, the ones I’ve done, have been pretty good so far, so try and keep it that way.
Q: All right. Very well done to you and congratulations to you as well. Charles, you said a moment ago that you weren’t happy with P3. Just how was the pace of the car out there?
CL: No, it was actually quite OK. I mean, I’m more disappointed about our Sprint Qualifying yesterday than I am today, because at the end of the day we did a good start. I think the pace was there. It was very difficult to follow in the second sector, but we were quite competitive. It wasn’t ever enough to overtake Oscar, but overall, I thought our race pace was a little bit stronger compared to our qualifying pace yesterday. We need to try and find something for this afternoon in order to start a little bit further up, and that should make our life a little bit easier, because also with all the managing and the warm temperatures of today, it was quite tricky.
Q: And if you do qualify better this afternoon, do you think you can challenge for the win tomorrow? Have you got that kind of pace?
CL: I mean, tomorrow it’s raining, so I think we all go a little bit into the unknown for that, but surely the higher up the better.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Adam Cooper – Adam Cooper F1) I guess it’s the obvious question we all want to ask. What have you learned in the last day and a half about the impact of the new rules in qualifying spec and race spec, given that this isn’t such a critical track on energy deployment, and Montreal obviously might be a bit tougher?
LN: Not a lot at the minute. I think some things remain as expected. You know, there are still certain points where the quicker you go, the more penalised you get and, you know, still in the future that’s something we want to fix as drivers, and I think as Formula 1 you just want to be going flat out everywhere and maximising things. You don’t want to go quicker somewhere on a qualifying lap and get penalised for it. That’s just not how it should be. But it seems in the correct direction and I think we’re more likely to see a bigger benefit of it in other tracks. I think the thing is, as drivers, you’re always going to probably see us complain a bit, because that’s what we always do, but at the same time I think it’s a step forward. It’s got better. You know, for the majority of the laps yesterday in quali, you could push and you’re not really thinking, “I need to lift here earlier,” or, “I need to not get on throttle as much.” So, it felt a little bit more normal, and I think that was a nice thing. In a Sprint race, nothing really changes at all, apart from the superclips and things like that. But otherwise, yeah, a step in the right direction is as much as we can really ask for at the minute, and the rest of it really has to come maybe later in the year but also into the future years.
OP: No, I think it was summed up well. There’s a little bit less superclipping in qualifying, which is good, but as Lando said, some of the problems we’ve had in the start of the year are still there, especially in qualifying. So yeah, it’s a step in the right direction, but more somehow is needed in the future.
CL: No, nothing to add. I think I agree with everything. It’s also true we need to have realistic expectations, because we cannot change so much either. I think some of those technical regulations and the issues we are facing will remain there somehow. We can minimise them, and I think the approach was right and the steps the FIA has taken for here made it better. Whether we’ll arrive into a situation where there won’t be any of those problems anymore, I’m not sure.
Q: (Henry Payne – Detroit News) No yo-yo passing today like we saw at the Melbourne street course. Is that a difference in the two courses or do you expect that to change tomorrow?
CL: I’m not sure. I think today also the fact that it was so warm, being behind you overheat quite quickly the tyres, and that made it very difficult for me to be closer compared to the first two, three races. So, it’s probably a bit more dependent to today, but yeah, let’s see.
LN: No, I think he summed up. I mean, I didn’t see any of the racing behind, so it’s hard to say, but I think you’ll still have it. There’s no reason why there shouldn’t be. I think it’s probably just, like he says, the following is difficult here, because of the temperatures, and it’s a Sprint race, you know, so you’re probably pushing a bit more flat out. I think once it starts, you’ll still have it, so we’ll see tomorrow, I guess.
OP: Yeah, it’ll still be a thing. At one point my engineer told me Charles was catching me four tenths in one straight and then I was pulling away three in the next. So, you know, if he was able to get closer in following, you’re still going to have these big differences in speed.
Q: (Jon Noble – The Race) To Lando. In what ways are you more comfortable with the car this weekend? Is it just a case of more downforce from the upgrade, or are there characteristics that you were struggling before that have changed now, either with the power unit or the car itself?
LN: It’s not so much the power unit at all, really. The power unit’s been good all season, so I think we’re getting most out of that now, and we’re doing the best job we have done from that side, which is always, I say easy lap time, because it’s more just you go quick on straights, and everyone wants that. It’s the car is just clearly working significantly better. I think more consistent, more predictable in certain circumstances, which is a good thing in any speed or corner. So, you’re just able to kind of predict things better and then change things better from lap to lap. Before, it was a bit more kind of yin and yang with how the car might handle. So now we can kind of, I think, consistently drive at a closer limit to perfection. In the end of the day, simply, it’s more grip. You know, the car has just got more downforce and is working better, and primarily the rear… We’ve been struggling a lot with the rear the whole season, so I think that’s taken a good step forward. And since the first lap in FP1, I just felt like I could hit the throttle pedal a bit more aggressively, and that’s always a good feeling.
Q: (Diletta Colombo – Automoto) Question for Charles. Do you think you could optimise your performance in qualifying in comparison with yesterday, based on what you learned in Sprint Qualifying?
CL: Yes, but I think it’s also the case for everybody, especially on a Sprint weekend, where you only have one session, then you go straight to Sprint Qualifying, you’re always suboptimal. So, whether we can make it better compared to just ourselves, 100%, I’m pretty sure we will. Whether we will close the gap, I’m not so sure about that, because it seems to be a bit the trend this year, especially against the Mercedes power units, we seem to be quite strong in the race and quite close, or closer, but in qualifying we always tend to struggle more.
Q: (Thomas Maher – PlanetF1.com) Charles, we heard you’ve been quite critical of Kimi Antonelli early on in that race, saying that he’s bad at wheel-to-wheel. Was that just a heat-of-the-moment comment or is it a genuine weakness you think Kimi needs to address?
CL: No, I was being a bit harsh maybe, with the adrenaline inside the car. It’s true that we’ve had our moments with Kimi in the past and I hope this calms down a little bit going ahead, especially as he’s the only Italian driver on the grid against Ferrari. I wish it was with someone else, and I really like Kimi also as a person. No, it’s just sometimes a little bit too close for comfort and not really needed as well. So, in this particular case, I was quite angry in the car, but the comments were probably a bit too harsh.
Q: (Stuart Codling – Autosport) Question for Oscar. Sort of towards the end of the race there was a lot of tyre management going on, so that leading group split up a bit. But it kind of looked like you had your hands full. There was a lot on your plate over those opening laps before the race was sort of into double figures. You said about finding more to extract. Could you elucidate a little bit? Is it a working-the-tyres thing? Is it an engine management thing? OP: Just trying to go faster. I think from a power unit management side of things, there’s not that much to do in the race, especially around a track like this. So, it’s just the normal things of trying to get around the corners faster, really. So yeah, I’ve been trying to catch up a little bit all weekend. There’s a couple of laps in Sprint Quali that were good, but in general I’ve needed to find a little bit extra, and I think that was the case again today. So just need to understand where exactly I was losing and try and not lose there.
ENDS
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