Oscar Piastri: The car left a decent impression

      Oscar Piastri showed the best time at the end of Friday's practice sessions at Imola, 0.025 seconds ahead of Lando Norris, his McLaren team-mate.

      Oscar Piastri (1st): "Everything is going relatively well, although there are a number of points where we need to try to improve. This is not the first Friday when training runs quite smoothly, but it has already happened that difficulties began later, in Saturday qualifying.

      We need to keep working to find some more speed resources. However, the car left quite a decent impression, so overall everything is really good.

      A lot depended on qualifications at almost all stages this year, and Imola is a track where it is all the more important to show a high result on Saturday. But I think it's not just Lando and me who will be competing for pole. Tomorrow we will definitely have more real rivals, so we need to keep pushing and try to achieve even higher speeds."

      Lando Norris (2nd): "I think I'm quite happy with the training results. It's hard to find the right rhythm on this track. The track is fast, and it's important to choose the right moment to exit the pits and do everything right, although it's not easy to achieve this, given how high the speeds are.

      In general, the day was interesting, we managed to make some improvements to the settings, and hopefully we will be able to add more tomorrow. However, I am sure that Oscar also intends to find the resources of speed.

      But in training we always look better than others, and then, when qualifying begins, the rivals catch up with us. That's why I don't think we have a comfortable advantage, so we need to keep working. Alpine has a fast car, but this team has always shown good speed on this track.

      I have no doubt that Red Bull will catch up with us, and Mercedes will also improve, for this they just need to turn on the engines at full power. Therefore, it is impossible to calm down – and yet Friday was productive."