Friday at Spa-Francorchamps was a progressive day for the Mastercard McLaren Formula 1 Team.

While Lando Norris enjoyed a constructive day working to extract performance from the MCL40 and establish a strong setup foundation, Oscar Piastri's run plan was disrupted by a hydraulic leak at the end of Free Practice 1, which required a gearbox swap and cost him valuable track time in Free Practice 2.

Thanks to a strong effort from the garage to get Oscar back on track during FP2, the team gathered vital data and will focus overnight on fine-tuning energy deployment strategies and ensuring reliability, confident that close collaboration between both drivers will unlock the package's potential ahead of Saturday's Qualifying.

Having arrived in Belgium with a new lower downforce rear wing to test, this was fitted to Oscar's MCL40 for FP1, allowing the team to compare it to the alternative version fitted to Lando's car. Lando was doing single lap runs at the start of the session, with a set of aero rakes fitted behind the rear wheels, encouraging him to stay off the kerbs.

Oscar's session ended slightly early with him in P5 and Lando P7. A hydraulic issue became apparent towards the end of the session with two minutes remaining. He was able to slowly bring the car back to the garage, missing a lap and his practice launch, but allowing the team to get straight into the investigation.

With Oscar's car back in the garage, the team were able to dig into the build to identify and repair the hydraulic leak They were still working when FP2 commenced as a gearbox change was also required, resulting in the Number 81 car getting out on track 19 minutes into the session. By that point, the circuit had already had one Red Flag stoppage to allow marshals to sweep gravel off the racing line.

Lando headed straight out at the start of the session. His crew had fitted the new rear wing over the break, joining Oscar on the specification. Both drivers did short runs, with a planned, longer, high-fuel run at the end of the session curtailed after a significant crash for Pierre Gasly left debris strewn across the track. The circuit went green again in the final minutes, allowing both drivers to get out for their grid launch practice. Lando finished the session P2 with Oscar unfortunately experiencing an inconclusive session while finishing P6.

At a circuit where differences in energy deployment and maximum performance extraction play a key role, the current pecking order remains far from fixed, and today's result does not portray the true competitive standing. The team weren't able to quite complete the Friday programme that had been planned, but nevertheless have a wealth of information to analyse tonight, ahead of final practice and Qualifying tomorrow.

Looking ahead to tomorrow, the competitive order will become clearer as all teams are able to demonstrate their genuine pace. However, with car Number 1 exceeding the permitted number of allocated power electronics units, Lando will incur a 10-place grid penalty on Sunday, regardless of his Qualifying time.

Lando Norris: "A progressive day on track at Spa. 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.

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

Oscar Piastri: "Overall, it has been a reasonable day. 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."

Neil Houldey, Technical Director - Applied Engineering: "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. Lando did an excellent job extracting the maximum from the car and seems happy with the setup going into tomorrow. 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.

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