McLaren expected Monza competition, just not from Verstappen

McLaren’s drivers were expecting close competition at the Italian Grand Prix, but admit Max Verstappen was not the predicted main threat heading into the race weekend.

Verstappen took pole position after being fastest on both the first and second runs of Q3, earning his fourth pole of the year. It’s only his second since Saudi Arabia, but also marks a significant turnaround compared to a year ago when Red Bull struggled badly, and Oscar PIastri says he thought Ferrari might be the biggest challenger.

“I don’t think it’s a big surprise that it’s much closer here,” Piastri said after qualifying third. “Was Max at the top of my list of our competitors going into this weekend? I thought maybe Ferrari would be closer, but that’s based off last year.

“Generally, when the competition’s got close, Max has normally been the one that’s been the closest, so I don’t think it’s a massive surprise, but compared to last year it is a little bit.”

Lando Norris beat Piastri to second but was pipped by Verstappen on the final laps and says it shouldn’t come as a major surprise that the defending champion can be a threat, even if Monza was not predicted to be a strong Red Bull track.

“When you look at previous races, even when we’ve been incredible ... there have been plenty where Max has beaten us in a fair few races this season,” Norris said. “He qualified ahead in many races this season. Even last weekend’s Q3 ... it wasn’t like the gaps were huge; everyone was pretty close.

“We come to a track, we lose a tenth, he gains a tenth, and that’s all the difference. I wouldn’t say it’s a surprise. The real surprise is compared to last year.

“At the same time, when you have a strong team that have won for many years, the drivers and just a strong team in general, you expect them to improve like they’ve done from last year and also from their difficulties at the beginning of the season to where they are now. Not a surprise, but to improve so much from where they were here last year is credit to them.”

With Norris looking to start making inroads into Piastri’s championship lead, he is hopeful that McLaren will hold an advantage in terms of race pace, but says Saturday’s qualifying session provides a warning that Red Bull’s improvements could translate into Sunday performance.

“Definitely want to expect that," he said. "Everyone knows that our race pace is probably a bigger strength than our qualy pace. We’ve proven that many times, but they’ve improved a lot from last year.

“I think coming into the weekend, we probably didn’t expect the Red Bull to be quite as good. As soon as we did the first few runs, it was clear that they made some good steps compared to last season, so we’ll see. His race pace was good on Friday. It wasn’t too dissimilar to ours, so time will tell.”