“Quite a challenge to get through the program” – McLaren’s Andrea Stella training in Portugal

McLaren F1 Team Managing Director, Andrea Stella, described the Friday exercises as “busy” due to the shorter duration of each session and “difficult” as the wind came up during the afternoon.

The Woking-based team traveled to Portugal in high spirits after their first podium of the season, confident they could add more as the season progresses. The MCL35M fought for the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve on Friday.

Lando Norris went into eighth place in the morning, just under a second behind the leader Valtteri Bottasand struggled in the afternoon to only make the twelfth.

His teammate Daniel Ricciardo will be hoping for an excellent result in Portugal this weekend after a disappointing first two races but the Australian followed a similar pattern as his UK partner. He was only able to set the twelfth fastest time in the first practice session before recording his fastest time in the afternoon, a little more than half a second behind Lewis Hamilton and finished eighth.

Stella pointed out that the reduced duration of both practice sessions made things a bit busier and changed conditions on the track, but said they still had a lot of information before qualifying tomorrow.

“Today both training sessions were very busy – the reduced duration of 60 minutes makes it quite difficult to get through the program.

“In addition, the conditions here in Portugal are quite difficult due to the low-grip asphalt, the slow warming up of the tires and the wind that makes driving the car at the limit difficult.

“We had a very useful Friday and gathered good information about where we would like to improve the car overnight and also about the likely behavior of the tires for the race.

“We’re going to put everything together tonight, make some adjustments and do our best tomorrow.”