Norris “quite a long way off” Piastri’s real pace in practice · F1 · RaceFans

Lando Norris almost matched Lewis Hamilton’s pace-setting time in practice on Friday, but believes his team mate could have gone much quicker.

Oscar Piastri’s best time was two-tenths of a second slower than his team mate’s, but he was quicker throughout the first two sectors of the lap. Norris said his team mate could have gone significantly quicker if he’d had a clean final sector.

Drivers had their first experience of the full resurfaced Monza track today and produced lap times which were around a second faster than last year.

“I struggled a little bit today,” Norris told the official F1 channel after the session, “probably more with the car in FP1 – just low grip, I think everyone is probably is going to say a similar thing.

“But the track improved a lot for FP2 and I probably just didn’t progress as much as I needed to.

“The car was quick, Oscar was very quick, he made a big mistake and probably lost about four or five tenths. So he easily should have been P1 and that’s quite a long way off. So a bit of work for me to do.”

Norris expects the four quickest teams will all be in contention for pole position tomorrow. “It’s FP2 and I think we turn it up and others don’t,” he said. “So it’s close.

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“Between Ferrari, us, Red Bull I’m sure after FP1 and Mercedes are very quick as well, it looks like definitely eight cars this time. Eight cars all looking fast and it should make it exciting tomorrow.”

Piastri admitted there were “some things to tidy up, definitely, but I think the pace and potential is definitely there so I’m leaving pretty happy.”

He said keeping tyre temperatures down in the hot conditions was the biggest challenge he faced today. “For the tyres, it’s never fun when they’re so hot. [But] it’s the same thing for everybody.

“It’s not as hot track temperatures as what we’ve seen at some places this year, but it definitely feels warm enough.”