McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team will start the 2026 United States Grand Prix from the fourth row, after Oscar Piastri qualified seventh and Lando Norris eighth at the Circuit of The Americas.

In a closely contested session, changing track conditions and strong winds made consistency difficult, while a deleted lap for Lando and disrupted Q3 run plans prevented the team from maximising its potential.

Attention now turns to Sunday's race, where tyre degradation and a range of strategic options could create opportunities to move forward. Starting from the fourth row will make the challenge a demanding one, but the team will focus on executing a clean race, gaining positions and putting both cars in contention for a podium finish.

Heading into Saturday's action, both McLaren Mastercard MCL40 race cars had minor tweaks overnight, and ran two sets of Soft tyres in Free Practice 3, committing both Lando and Oscar to a 4-2-1 tyre allocation for the rest of the weekend. They started the first runs 13 minutes into the session, with Lando doing one run on his first set and Oscar splitting his with a period in the garage. They both did a single run on their second set, before going out at the end of the session at high fuel for grid launch practice.

The circumstances were similar to Free Practice 2, with both drivers capable of fast sectors, but being challenged by the conditions to put complete laps on the board. Lando faced a difficult session and was unable to set a representative time on his second set, either aborting laps or having them deleted for track limits. He finished the hour P8, with Oscar in P6.

This pattern continued into Qualifying, with the pace of the MCL40 on the Soft tyre obvious at times, and elusive at others. Oscar opted to do Q1 on the more stable Medium compound. He did a long first run on that tyre, with two push laps separated by two cool-down laps. He also went out again at the end of the session for an insurance run, but was safely through before completing his lap and able to bail-out and pit. Lando, meanwhile, did two runs on a single Soft set, with the second run on the used rubber taking him into P1.

Lando's opening lap in Q2 was a good one, he was P2 and able to watch the rest of the session from the garage. Oscar's was less competitive as his first run left him P10, but having not used a Soft tyre in Q1, he had the luxury of fitting a second new set and going again, eventually finishing the session a better P6.

Q3 saw the drivers seventh and eighth after their first attempts. Running at the back of the field, Oscar's lap was marginally quicker than his Q2 time, but Lando was half-a-second down. The hope was that the final laps would come good, but Oscar couldn't find an improvement, lapping two-thousandths of a second slower, and while it looked initially like Lando had moved up to P6, his time was struck-off for a track limits infringement at the penultimate corner, one of three cars on the final run to suffer that fate.

The sense in the garage post-session was one of an opportunity missed - but equally the team takes heart from the good long-run pace the cars showed yesterday afternoon in Q2. The Circuit of The Americas provides opportunities to move forward, and attention now turns to maximising the potential in the car for tomorrow.

Oscar Piastri: "That's P7. We obviously wanted more from today. Overall, it has been a difficult weekend. The car has the potential to be quick, it's just been hard to drive and we haven't had the pace. Over the practice sessions and into Qualifying we tried a few different things, but while we weren't expecting them to be a magic fix, they just haven't quite done what we've wanted them to.

"We'll keep working because there's speed in the package—we just haven't unlocked it yet. The focus now is on understanding how we can push the car further and extract the most out of tomorrow. If we can get ahead at the start, I think we can keep the on-track position, so let's see what we can do."

Lando Norris: "It was a disappointing end to the Qualifying session this afternoon. The car had the pace to be further up the order, but I didn't put the lap together. It was challenging to drive today, especially in the corners with the wind making consistency across a complete lap difficult to achieve.

"Starting eighth makes tomorrow difficult, but the race is a long one, and the aim is to recover and make the most of the pace we have by taking the fight to the field. We'll work hard as a team overnight to see where we can make gains to aim for a strong finish to the weekend."

Andrea Stella: "Our performance in Qualifying reflects our current standing compared to our direct rivals: we're around third or fourth place, with very tight gaps between us. Clearly, our grid positions could have been better had it not been for Lando's time being deleted due to track limits and the difficulties we faced in completing our two runs in Q3.

"The conditions were very tricky: the wind and the changing track conditions made it difficult to replicate a corner from one lap to the next. Overall, though, I think the result is fair. We are aware that the MCL40 has good potential, but it is very difficult to extract, and this leaves the drivers with little or no margin for error, which - as we saw today - can prove costly.

"Now we need to focus on tomorrow's race. Tyre degradation and the various possible strategies could create opportunities: for our part, we need to manage the race well, make up positions and put ourselves in a position to fight for the podium. It won't be easy starting from the fourth row, but we'll give it our all."