After a triple series of races, culminating in a condensed sprint weekend – followed by a rest weekend, Formula 1 teams should be happy to return to a typical three-test weekend.
Only, most of them aren’t, as the difficulty of setting the ride height correctly on this bumpy circuit during a weekend filled with so many upgrades and modifications to the car created a lot of grumpy people in the paddock.
Here are our winners and losers from the practice day.
Loser: Lando Norris (7th)
Looks like there might be a slight disconnect here between how McLaren thinks its Austin Friday went and how its world champion driver thinks his Austin Friday went.
Lando Norris was really fast in FP1, 0.25 seconds off the pace, and in the long runs FP2 looked reasonable, but the qualifying simulations were a disaster – so much so that he actually went slower (by just under a tenth) in FP2 than he managed in FP1.
The main downside is that Norris had a big lock up at turn 15, shortly after setting the fastest second sector time of all.
But that’s really at the heart of it all. There is no doubt that the McLaren can be a fast car, Norris simply maintains that it is “very difficult to drive” and too close to the knife’s edge to easily access that level of performance.
“As has been the case for a long time, it’s just too difficult to be consistent, to have a good feeling consistently,” he added. “The pace isn’t bad, it’s just very difficult to achieve.
“For the car to be fast, we just have to try really hard to be perfect, and you can’t be perfect. I’m sure everyone has the same problems in one way or another, but we’re just not fast enough yet, easily, to be there consistently.” -Ben Anderson
Winner: McLaren (7th & 8th)
What the hell is McLaren doing in our winners section when Norris was so pessimistic and both cars finished FP2 behind a Racing Bulls, you ask?
It depends on the mood at the top at McLaren, which looks much better than Norris’ prospects.
Technical director Rob Marshall spoke of the “very small parts” that McLaren brought to Austin, providing a “measurable advantage” that also made a noticeable difference to lap times.
This measurable benefit includes an aerodynamic gain through brake changes, including flow conditioning around the wheels and wake control.
All this has led Marshall to conclude that McLaren is in a fight with its main rivals here.
“From now on we have to be really optimistic,” he said. -Jack Cozens
Winner: Charles Leclerc/Ferrari (1st)
An obvious choice of course, given he dominated both Friday sessions, but Leclerc didn’t just look fast on the soft tires in FP2.
It looked like that pace was easy to achieve, and the fact that he was more than six tenths ahead of Ferrari teammate Lewis Hamilton – who had two attempts during a qualifying simulation and set roughly the same lap time each time – suggests that it was Leclerc in particular who set things straight for Ferrari at the start of this weekend.
The big caveat is long-term pace, where Ferrari would generally feel its inherent strength lies this season. Is Leclerc’s fast speed over a lap too big a compromise for tire degradation? And of course, the eternal question of whether Ferrari can maintain the pace when the engines rev up for Saturday’s qualifying showdown.
“I think we started the weekend off on the right foot with a good balance and I think that’s probably the standout thing for this Friday,” Leclerc said.
“But I also believe that the others will start to push their cars a little more like they always do in qualifying, and so it’s going to be difficult because it was a very clean Friday on my side.”
“There’s more performance in the car, a little more, but the others seem to be winning more than us from Friday to Saturday, and given the small gap there is… it’s not going to be so easy tomorrow.” – B.A.
Winner: Aston Martin (16th & 17th)
Track director Mike Krack spoke on Thursday about the need to “manage your expectations a little better” following Aston Martin’s misplaced confidence at the Singapore GP. Fernando Alonso, for his part, quietly spoke of the chances of “nice surprises” at the United States GP.
Based on Friday’s practice, Alonso was right to be optimistic. Inside the theoretical Q2 threshold in both sessions (and up to the dizzying heights of 12th in FP1), with teammate Lance Stroll for company each time, the Aston Martin once again looks like a genuine midfield contender.
Yes, it’s still a sign of how the mighty have fallen in love with a team that so much is expected of, on a day when Adrian Newey spoke of the disappointment Honda was likely to feel with the progress of its F1 engine in 2026.
But in the context of this painful campaign, this Friday was one of the most painless. -JC
Loser: Isack Hadjar (9th)
OK, race plans, fuel loads and especially at COTA, lap deletions all play a role, but Isack Hadjar failed to get within a second of his Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen in both tests and called his car’s handling disgusting.
When asked to explain his “disgusting” radio comments after training, Hadjar replied that “it’s just a disaster.”
He explained: “From the first sector until the end of the lap, I was slower (on the softs) than on the mediums. It was just impossible to ride and I was losing the front a lot. You have to take a look at it because it’s not normal, why are there so many degrees on a lap?
Questioning journalists certainly won’t provide the answer, Isack… -Jack Benyon
Loser: Williams (20th & 22nd)
After being the first team to blatantly and vocally change direction from 2025 to prepare for 2026, being among the first teams to do so two years in a row is the most powerful damning indictment of Williams’ situation.
He was so sure his car would be terrible in Austin that he used an unusual strategy of compromising this weekend in competition to try to learn how to fix the problems he’s having with his driving.
Even Aston Martin – well over four seconds off the pace at the start of the season – hasn’t admitted to changing focus towards 2027 and has essentially built a new car that, according to some statistics, could have been on pole in the last two races with a different engine.
Either way, if ruining this weekend gives Williams insight into his problems for next year, it will of course be worth it. Until then, she will have to suffer the indignity of having to very publicly admit defeat with a 2026 car with which she was supposed to have a big head start. -JB
Winner: Liam Lawson (6th)
Liam Lawson managed to pass both McLarens in FP2, and while that’s unlikely on Sunday and perhaps due to what was happening with McLaren, it’s still a sign that the Racing Bulls are performing well.
Lawson says that “overall the car is in a good place” and that it’s “nice to see it running” given the “new things” on the car.
More degradation than expected and a likely return of Nico Hulkenberg – whose Audi teammate Gabriel Bortoleto beat the Racing Bulls in FP1 but has a grid penalty on Sunday, while Hulkenberg only received new parts in FP2 and expects a handling fix on Saturday – means Lawson is not out of the woods yet.
And we’ve seen several times this year Racing Bulls put on a great practice lap that doesn’t translate into race performance. But that being said, Friday was a good day for Lawson. -JB
Winner: Cadillac (19th and 21st)
No, this is not based on Valtteri Bottas’ 19th place in FP2 ahead of the two Williams. But it depends on how he characterized the day.
“I think we did the most things we’ve ever done in a Friday,” said Bottas, who called it a testing day – but one that went smoothly and better than expected.
Cadillac still expects it to be a tough weekend; Tire degradation and overheating, as Bottas said, is “definitely not our strong point” and that was evident on Friday. And Cadillac’s productivity also means “it’s going to be a busy evening, because like I said with both cars, we tried a lot of different things.” (My teammate Sergio Perez used an experimental floor, with 2027 in mind, while Bottas used different front wings and tried different roll stiffnesses.)
These experimental ideas (which Colton Herta also used in FP1) were done “to challenge our thinking about the aerodynamic concept of the car,” according to race director Marc Hynes, as well as to validate the correlation between Cadillac’s CFD and wind tunnel work and what it sees in the real world.
Based on this reception, Friday’s work was positive. -JC
Gn sports
