F1 – Formula One constructors’ world champions McLaren were upbeat yesterday despite a modest start to their weekend in the F1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia 2026 at Sepang International Circuit (SIC).
Completing a plan designed to reacquaint the team to the track, the Bahrain-owned outfit made ‘a solid amount of progress’ from the first to second practice sessions, and are now looking to continue to up the pace as the F1 field heads into qualifying later today.
“An interesting first day here at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia,” said defending F1 drivers’ world champion Lando Norris, who had McLaren’s best practice classification of third in yesterday’s session two.
“Nice to get our first laps in around this circuit – it’s a fun track and an interesting challenge in terms of layout and track surface.
“We’re struggling more than we’d like to, but we made some progress going into FP2. We’ve still got quite a bit more to solve if we want to be competitive, but we’ll look at the data this evening and see what we can do going into FP3 and qualifying tomorrow.”
Oscar Piastri, who was the winner of the F1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix last year at Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir, echoed Norris’s sentiments and is eager to keep improving their performance as they continue their debut weekend at SIC.
“That’s Friday at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia done – it was a reasonable day for us,” said Piastri, who was sixth in the second practice.
“From FP1 into FP2, we made a solid amount of progress, which meant we finished the day well.”
“Our quali sims and longer runs felt pretty good. But we still have a lot to find overnight and a lot more to understand about racing here.
“The true long-run performance across the grid, including for us, is still a bit of an unknown for everyone, but it feels like we could be in the mix.
“The circuit is a cool one to drive, but we’re finding the grip and high tyre degradation are really challenging. We need to understand both better overnight to put us in a better position ahead of qualifying.
“Our goal is to build on today’s positive momentum and extract as much performance as possible to ensure we’re competitive.”
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