Pato O’Ward describes his FP1 outing on the Mexico Metropolis Grand Prix as “a dream come true” after finishing a clear and aggressive session on Friday.
McLaren ran O’Ward as a part of its rookie follow necessities, with the IndyCar star taking up Lando Norris’ automobile for the opening session of the race weekend. With the FP1 look being the primary time O’Ward has pushed at his residence race, he says his closing tally of 21 laps and a greatest time simply over 0.3s off teammate Oscar Piastri was a robust return after a prolonged purple flag.
“I believed it was an ideal FP1,” O’Ward mentioned. “We acquired by way of a really intense working plan, particularly with such a chaotic and loopy follow session.
“I might have liked to have some extra likelihood maybe on the onerous [tire] to organize for the gentle, however with having what we did, I can really feel fairly happy with what I acquired out for myself and with all the data that I used to be capable of collect for the workforce, as a result of they’re clearly in a reasonably vital title battle and I’m clearly right here … to assist that they keep the place they’re.
“A dream come true, I noticed the Mexican flags, I noticed floating Pato faces in sure areas; it was actually cool.”
O’Ward admits he was underneath very strict directions from McLaren because of the information the workforce wanted to assemble, however centered on being constant over attempting to show his uncooked tempo potential.
“‘Pato, don’t shunt the automobile!’ Pato in the event you try to go too quick I’m going to scream at you!’ and, ‘We want info,’ [were the messages], and this info is extraordinarily vital to what the weekend goes to appear to be,” O’Ward mentioned.
“It was very clear that I needed to prioritize every little thing that was wanted from me when it comes to gathering info, being constant, nevertheless it’s fairly troublesome. If you don’t know this automobile, you don’t know this observe a lot, you’re attempting to study for your self, however you’re additionally attempting to remain as constant as doable for the workforce, for all the information that they’re gathering, however I’m more than happy with it.
“I believe we gathered every little thing that we wanted to in a reasonably chaotic session, and I believe they’re fairly proud of the job that I did. I definitely am, so I can’t wait to drive this automobile once more. Hopefully I get to drive it someday earlier than the yr ends. That may be cool.”
