McLaren optimistic despite disrupted Friday as Norris shines and Piastri overcomes hydraulic setback

McLaren ended the opening day of the Belgian Grand Prix weekend cautiously optimistic after Lando Norris emerged as Mercedes' closest challenger in second practice, while Oscar Piastri recovered from an early hydraulic problem to complete a productive afternoon at Spa-Francorchamps.

The Woking-based team experienced contrasting fortunes across Friday's two sessions. Norris completed an alternative programme in FP1, spending much of the session on the soft tyres as McLaren adapted its plans knowing the Briton will serve a 10-place grid penalty for Sunday's Grand Prix after taking a fourth power electronics unit.

Piastri, meanwhile, suffered a hydraulic issue late in the opening session that forced him to limp back to the pits. Although the Australian missed only the practice starts, the fault required a gearbox change and delayed his return for FP2, costing him valuable track time.

Despite the disruption, McLaren's pace looked increasingly competitive as the day progressed.

Norris produced a best lap of 1m46.134s in FP2 to finish second, just 0.190s behind Mercedes pace-setter Andrea Kimi Antonelli, while Piastri recovered to sixth after finally getting meaningful running on both the medium and soft compounds.

Reflecting on Friday, Norris felt McLaren had moved in the right direction after a difficult start to the day.

"A progressive day on track at Spa," Norris said. "The first session wasn't clean due to a few issues that kept us in the garage, but we made some positive steps forward with the car between FP1 and FP2."

"The one-lap pace seems reasonable, and we feel a bit happier with the balance now compared to this morning. However, we're not getting ahead of ourselves. We've seen this pattern before on Fridays, and we expect the leading competitors to show their hand more tomorrow."

Despite his encouraging pace, Norris knows his weekend will become significantly more difficult because of the 10-place grid penalty he will receive for Sunday's race.

"Our focus is to analyse the data overnight, see if we can make another step forward in tomorrow's practice, before heading into Qualifying," he said.

"We'll see where we truly stand tomorrow and keep working hard to continue moving in the right direction despite the frustration of a 10-place grid penalty on Sunday from using a fourth power electronics unit."

Piastri was equally positive after overcoming his disrupted afternoon and praised the McLaren mechanics for getting his car back on track.

"Overall, it has been a reasonable day," the Australian said. "Unfortunately, we were delayed going out in FP2 as the team worked to fix the cause of the hydraulic leak that appeared at the end of FP1."

"Thank you to them for working through to get that sorted. However, we made good progress in FP2, and our pace is looking reasonable. We are heading in the right direction, and we are in a good place to build on that in FP3 tomorrow and into Qualifying."

Technical Director of Applied Engineering Neil Houldey echoed the drivers' optimism, believing McLaren showed stronger pace than it has relative to its rivals over recent race weekends.

"We're reasonably happy with the general pace shown today and feel we're a bit better in relation to the usual status quo seen over the past few race weekend," Houldey said.

"Lando did an excellent job extracting the maximum from the car and seems happy with the setup going into tomorrow."

The Briton also highlighted the scale of the effort required behind the scenes after Piastri's hydraulic failure.

"However, it wasn't a completely smooth day for us. The hydraulics issue that presented itself at the end of FP1 on Oscar's car was disruptive, unfortunately costing him valuable track time in FP2 as the team continued to work into the second session after swapping the gearbox."

"It was a strong effort from the team to get through the workload as quickly as possible, so thank you to them."

Houldey also revealed that McLaren's newly introduced low-downforce rear wing performed as expected, giving the team another reason for confidence heading into the remainder of the weekend.

"The low downforce rear wing we brought has performed as we hoped, which is another positive to take into the weekend," he explained.

"Our main focus overnight will be on fine-tuning the energy deployment strategy and ensuring reliability so that we are able to maximise our track time. We've gathered a lot of data from various options tested today, but we know the best is still out there for us to find."

While Piastri's interrupted running leaves him with more catching up to do than Norris, Houldey believes the team's collaborative approach will help unlock further performance.

"While Oscar's lost time makes things a little harder, we are confident in his ability to get up to speed. The collaboration between our drivers is a huge strength, and by working together, we're sure we can unlock more performance from the package for Qualifying and the race."