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Norris hints at "odd" performance from his McLaren in Monza practice McLaren showed promising pace during Friday practice at the Italian Grand Prix, but Lando Norris believes the team is not yet in a position to fight for pole position at Monza despite finishing fourth in FP2. The reigning world champion was the quicker of the two McLaren drivers in both sessions, finishing sixth in FP1 with a 1:23.719 before improving to a 1:22.943 in FP2. Oscar Piastri, meanwhile, ended FP1 in 11th with a 1:24.184 and improved to sixth in the afternoon session with a 1:23.028. The Australian once again found himself behind his team-mate, although McLaren's Friday programme was focused heavily on understanding its low-downforce package rather than simply chasing the fastest possible lap. One of the most notable features of the McLaren MCL40 at Monza was its unconventional rear-wing design. The team continued development work on its so-called "upside-down" rear wing, with flow-vis paint used during FP1 to help the engineers understand the aerodynamic behaviour of the concept. The low-downforce configuration is particularly important at Monza, where teams are required to find the right compromise between straight-line speed and sufficient aerodynamic performance through the circuit's corners. Despite finishing fourth in FP2, Norris was not convinced that McLaren currently has the performance required to challenge for pole. "The pace isn’t where we need it to be right now. Oddly, we need to find performance in the corners where we expected to be strong, while we’re a bit better than expected in the ones we thought would be difficult." Norris also highlighted just how competitive the field currently appears to be, with Mercedes and Ferrari both showing strong pace and Red Bull expected to improve as the weekend progresses. "It’s very tight at the front and the group behind isn’t far off either, so we’ll work overnight to find gains, but it's going to be tough." Norris not expecting pole fight yetMcLaren entered the Italian Grand Prix weekend as one of the teams expected to challenge for victory, but Friday's running suggested that the MCL40 is not yet perfectly suited to Monza. Norris was particularly clear about the team's current qualifying prospects. The Briton believes, however, that McLaren can still make progress before qualifying if the team manages to improve the car's balance. "I don’t think we’re in the fight for Pole right now, so the priority is to focus on execution and come away with a decent result. If we can tidy up the balance and make the right changes, we can still put ourselves in a decent position, even if we’re not quite where we want to be on outright performance." That leaves McLaren with a significant amount of work to complete overnight. The team will need to analyse its aerodynamic data, understand the behaviour of the unusual rear-wing configuration and find improvements in the corners where Norris believes the car is currently underperforming. Piastri also searching for performancePiastri had a quieter Friday compared with his team-mate, finishing 11th in FP1 before moving up to sixth in FP2. His best time of 1:23.028 left him just 0.085 seconds behind Norris, suggesting that the gap between the two McLaren drivers was much smaller in the second session than the FP1 results initially indicated. Nevertheless, Piastri also acknowledged that McLaren is currently lacking the performance required at the front. The Australian believes the team still has plenty of potential to unlock from its package. "Day one in Monza done. We’ve learned a decent amount and collected a lot of data, which gives us a solid foundation to work from overnight. There’s lots for us still to learn and maximise as we don’t have the pace we need right now." Piastri therefore expects McLaren to use Friday's data to make further improvements before the crucial Saturday sessions. "We’ll focus on unlocking more performance overnight and see what more we can take from FP3 into Qualifying," concluded the Australian.