{"id":44742,"date":"2026-03-06T11:51:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T06:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/?p=44742"},"modified":"2026-03-06T11:51:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T06:21:15","slug":"australian-gp-2026-what-worked-and-what-didnt-for-mclaren-after-fp1-and-fp2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/formula-1\/race-weekend\/australian-gp-2026-what-worked-and-what-didnt-for-mclaren-after-fp1-and-fp2\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian GP 2026: What worked and what didn\u2019t for McLaren after FP1 and FP2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>McLaren delivered an impressive turnaround across the first two practice sessions of the <strong>Australian Grand Prix 2026 at Albert Park<\/strong>, showing strong pace in FP2 after a difficult start in FP1.<\/p>\n<h3>Good points<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Oscar Piastri topped FP2 with a lap time of 1:19.729<\/strong>, delivering an excellent performance on home soil and demonstrating strong single-lap pace.<\/p>\n<p>Both McLaren cars looked quick during qualifying simulations in FP2, showing a clear improvement from FP1 where the team had been running in the midfield due to early issues.<\/p>\n<p>Piastri\u2019s home advantage also appeared to help with confidence and setup development, contributing to the team\u2019s strong second-session performance.<\/p>\n<p>The team also showed resilience by bouncing back quickly despite technical problems earlier in the day.<\/p>\n<h3>Bad points<\/h3>\n<p>FP1 proved challenging for McLaren. <strong>Lando Norris completed only seven laps due to gearbox issues<\/strong>, limiting valuable running time and data collection.<\/p>\n<p>Piastri also reported <strong>power delivery inconsistencies early in the session<\/strong>, which briefly affected his track time.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, McLaren did not appear as strong during <strong>FP1 long runs compared with Ferrari and Red Bull<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h3>Overall<\/h3>\n<p>After recovering strongly in FP2, McLaren appear to be <strong>genuine contenders this weekend<\/strong>, provided reliability issues do not resurface during qualifying or the race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>McLaren delivered an impressive turnaround across the first two practice sessions of the Australian Grand Prix 2026 at Albert Park,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":250,"featured_media":44727,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4669],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-weekend"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44744,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44742\/revisions\/44744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}