Lando Norris arrived in Monaco as the race's defending winner and, in plenty of predictions, Ferrari's likeliest challenger. By the end of Friday practice, McLaren looked like the most troubled of the front-running teams.
Norris's day ended early. He stopped at the Nouvelle Chicane in FP2 with what McLaren called an electrical problem, climbed out and got a lift back to the pits. The stoppage then drew the FIA's attention for a different reason: when marshals tried to move the car, the clutch-disengagement button did not work as intended, leaving the McLaren stuck in gear and stretching out the virtual safety car. It echoed the issue that cost Racing Bulls' Liam Lawson and his team a 30,000-euro fine in Montreal, and the stewards opened a look into it.
Lost track time was only half of McLaren's problem. The other half was raw pace.
"I just didn't expect us to be so slow," Oscar Piastri admitted to reporters in Monaco, via Autosport. He had logged the mileage Norris missed, yet could not square it with the lap time. "My feeling in FP2 was actually quite okay — I feel quite comfortable in the car, but it doesn't translate into lap time." Asked whether he had setup directions in mind for the rest of the weekend, his answer was blunt: "Not yet, not really."
The order backed up the unease. Ferrari locked out the top two in both sessions, with Verstappen third and Mercedes in the mix. McLaren were nowhere near the front.
Peter Windsor summed up the day for the team in three words — "terrible day for McLaren" — describing the abandoned car and a scrappy run that never came together. The P1 podcast, broadcasting from Monaco, was just as taken aback. "Their pace has just been surprisingly bad — really surprisingly bad," one host said. "I was convinced they were going to be probably the second best team behind Ferrari, and they've looked really slow." His verdict: "McLaren absolutely nowhere at the moment."
There was sympathy for Norris, whose season has been repeatedly undone by reliability. "Anytime he does actually have a faultless weekend, he's been phenomenal," the P1 hosts noted — the problem being how rarely those weekends have arrived.
McLaren insist the deficit is fixable. Engineering chief Rob Marshall told reporters the team had "some ideas and we are confident that we can make it better" — confidence the car badly needs before qualifying. Around a circuit where overtaking barely exists, Saturday afternoon is where McLaren's weekend gets won or salvaged. On Friday's evidence, they are starting it on the back foot.
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*Originally published on [NewsFormula One](https://newsformula.one/article/mclaren-monaco-friday-struggle-norris-piastri). Visit for full coverage.*
