Today's press conference with Zak Brown, Peter Bayer, Frederic Vasseur and Alessandro Alunni Bravi.

Q: Fred, I feel we should start with you. Carlos Sainz, he did more than 20 laps in FP1. How is he?
Frederic Vasseur: I would say, so far so good. He was a little bit on the back foot the first couple of laps and then step by step he came back pretty well. I think he's optimistic for the rest of the weekend.

Q: Is he in any pain?
FV: So far, no. If he had the pain, it would have been a big issue. So far, all OK and it's under control.

Q: So you're confident that he will do the rest of this Grand Prix weekend?
FV: Yeah, I'm not a doctor at all, but I'm confident.

Q: Now, Ollie Bearman has, of course, been on standby just in case this weekend. A lot of people in here heaped praise on Ollie after what he did for you in Saudi. Can we just get your reflections on that weekend and the job he did after such a late call-up?
FV: I think there are pros and cons. For sure, it was a very late call, because I called him two hours before FP3, I think, something like this. At least he didn't have time to think too much about the situation. It was the positive of this. And then he did a mega job all over the weekend. For sure, it's difficult. It's even more difficult to start in Jeddah and to miss FP1, FP2. And he was able to put everything together from the quali, that he was, I think, a couple of thousands off Q3. And then in the race, he was very consistent until the end. But he did a perfect job, I think, all the team was more than happy with what Ollie did. And it's not just about the result, it's the behaviour all over the weekend. And so it was perfect.

Q: You say perfect. You've worked with so many young drivers over the last 30 years. Have you seen anything better?
FV: I'm not so old!

Q: Have you seen anything better than what Ollie achieved?
FV: We have to avoid to draw any conclusion, that it's far too early. Now he has to be focused on the F2 and I'm sure that all the journalists, the press and so on will draw a conclusion after the end of the championship, if he's not winning the F2, but we have to do it to take it step by step. He did very well in Jeddah. He will have the occasion to do other FP1s into the season. He will do some tests and so on but the main focus for him is also to be the GP2, sorry the F2!

Q: Final one from me. The SF24. Do you feel you're closer to Red Bull than you were this time last year?
FV: It's not the feeling. Last year in Jeddah, in the race, we were something like one second off. And this season, we are perhaps four tenths. For sure, we are much closer to Red Bull than one year ago, but we are still behind. The business is to be first, it's not to be second and not too far away. For sure, we are in the right direction. We have to continue to develop, but we are still behind.

Q: Thank you very much. Zak, if we could come to you now. Coming into Melbourne a year ago McLaren were last in the Constructors' Championship. You're currently lying third. What a difference 12 months makes.
Zak Brown: Yeah, it's a lot better this time around. This was the first race where we scored points last year, and even then we inherited quite a few after the incident at the very end of the race. But all the men and women at McLaren are continuing to do a fantastic job. I feel like we've kind of picked up where we left off the second half of last year. The field has never been closer, so we need to continue to push hard, but I think we've designed and developed a very strong racing car that will hopefully get stronger, but we know the other nine teams are not sitting still. Our drivers are doing a great job. We've got a lot of harmony in the racing team, so I feel we're in a really good place to continue to improve and push forward and pretty excited for a lot more racing this year.

Q: You talk about harmony. You've always been big on culture, team culture. How has that changed? How has it evolved as the performance has improved?
ZB: Well, we're all a bunch of racers, both at the factory and at the racetrack, as are all racing teams. But I think if you look at teams that have been dominant over the years, ourselves included, there's always been kind of a foundation of a lot of the team worked together for a long period of time, whether it was the Ferrari dominance, the McLaren, the Williams, the Red Bull, etc. So we're still a pretty young team as far as the current team [is concerned]. Andrea Stella is doing a fantastic job. He's a year into his job... Some of the technical changes that we've made, some of the new additions that we've had. And so I think we just need a little bit more time to kind of continue to gel. I think that's what makes any sporting team strong is continuity, trust, relationships. And so that's something that we're focused on. So I'm very happy we've got our drivers locked down for the long term. And I think we've got a great team in place and just need some more time to continue to try and climb up the grid.

Q: Rob Marshall is here this weekend. David Sanchez is new as well. What sort of impact are they making on the team?
ZB: Well, they've got a lot of experience, a lot of energy, a lot of know-how. They've won a lot of races, championships. But we've got a big racing team. All of these racing teams are big now. So they're adding value and kind of turbocharging what's already an excellent team because we see what the team was capable of doing the second half of last year. So I think they just bring some added energy, experience, some knowledge of obviously what two very strong teams have been doing. And so that knowledge and know-how is something that kind of feeds into the organisation. And then they're great personalities that bring a lot of energy to the team.

Q: What about Oscar Piastri, the hometown hero this weekend? He's had two great races, including Saudi, where he overtook Fernando Alonso twice. Have you seen him take a step forward over the winter?
ZB: Yeah, he continues to get faster and faster. Obviously, we're two races in, but what we're seeing is he's got his rookie stripes off now. And so his Fridays, he gets on the pace right away. He doesn't really make mistakes. He's extremely fast. I think for the first two races of the year, it's the closest driver pairing in the field. And that's exactly what you want as a team. And I think they're pushing each other. They're pushing the team. So I'm very excited about our driver line-up for the foreseeable future.

Q: Zak, many thanks. Peter, if we could come on to you now. Let's start with what's just happened on track. It looks like a positive FP1 for you guys. What are the drivers saying about the car?
Peter Bayer: Yeah, we had focused really since Jeddah on the balance of the car, aero balance, mechanical balance, really making sure that we, you know, get the optimum out of the car. We have brought a new rear wing, which we had on both cars, that seemed to work and both drivers felt really good in the car, actually, and Yuki probably even a bit more, because he didn't really have much to say about the car. And for Daniel, we think we know what to do. So, yeah, let's see. It's only FP1, but, you know, we need to believe in it.

Q: And Peter, when you think back to Abu Dhabi last year, when Yuki led for five laps, the start of the season's had its frustrations. Do you know why?
PB: Yeah, well, you know, we as a team, we were able to build on the fantastic legacy that Franz Tost has created, but Laurent could only join us in January. So the focus was really on building the team. And we've been shaking the tree...

FV: Could have been much worse.

PB: Yeah, I know! And so we've been changing the structures. We've been creating new positions. New people have been joining us and others will follow. And so the focus was really... We were a bit lucky because we could push until the end last year with developments. And then the beginning of this year was really focusing on getting everything, everyone into the right position. And as Zak said, it's all about the people and to develop the culture. And we see that coming together, but it's a long-term project that we're working on and we're confident that towards the mid of the season we will see the fruits of the work we do now.

Q: What about this weekend? The team has finished in the points here in Melbourne for the last three years. How confident are you of continuing that run on Sunday?
PB: You know, I'm always an optimist, but when you see how tight it is in the midfield, especially, and you see that the top 10, if the top five teams bring both cars to the finish, then it's very, very difficult for us in the second half of the grid to score points, which is probably also why we have seen some new strategies applied and early team orders and things which usually wouldn't be seen so early in the year. But I think it's because in that second half of the field, we have to come up with creative ideas and we'll push for it as hard as we can, obviously, to end up in the points.

Q: Alright. Well, good luck with that. And Alessandro, coming to you now, I know you've got problems with your voice, so we'll be quiet. We will listen carefully. But can we talk about the C44, your car this year? The team had high expectations coming in. Hasn't quite gone according to plan. How do you explain the opening two races?
Alessandro Alunni Bravi: First of all, sorry for my voice. I think that we didn't materialise all the potential of the car in the first two races because we had two problems at the pit stop with both cars, with Valtteri during the first race in Bahrain, where it was possible to fight for points. The same happened with Zhou in Jeddah, and we were also that time fighting with Haas that then scored a point with Hulkenberg. So I think that the potential is there, but for different reasons we were not able to translate this into points. As Peter said, the field is very tight, especially between the last five teams and every detail counts. We need to work better during the weekend, also to find the right set-up window early and give to our drivers a better possibility to understand the car ahead of qualifying session, that is also a factor for them. And of course, now we need to fix the problem with the pit stop that has hugely affected our performance. We have been working hard after Jeddah to fix this problem. It's not an easy one because it's not just related to one component. We have here some solutions that will mitigate this issue and then we will have the next races in our final solution. But what we need to do? Of course we need to deliver a better job.

Q: What exactly is the problem with the pit stops?
AAB: We redesigned all the components from the hub, nuts, everything, in order to improve our pit stop and we changed also the equipment. So we found that there is an issue with the design of a part and we are redesigning the part but of course this takes time also for the production and everything.

Q: So this weekend are you using the same equipment that you had in Saudi?
AAB: We have the same equipment, but we have some mitigation measures to be put in place, also some process for the drivers, how to approach the pit stop, also for the mechanics. Of course, maybe we will be slower, but for us it's important to be consistent and to have the car running out.

Check out our Friday gallery from Melbourne here.