Today's team representatives press conference with Christian Horner, Mario Isola, Andrea Stella and Alessandro Alunni Bravi.

Q: Andrea, can we start with you, please? Let's start with a progress report about McLaren's season so far, have you met your expectations?
Andrea Stella: I think in terms of our expectation, we are happy that we consolidated the development trajectory that we started 12 months ago. I think being part of the first group of cars was important to see at the start of the season. The third position in the classification, at the moment, is something that we are happy with. But ultimately, we want to be competing for winning races. And this means that we need to, if anything, improve the development and bring upgrades to the car. And I think if we are able to do so, if we are able to continue what we have achieved over the last 12 months, like I said, before we can compete for winning races, this is the ambition. But so far, happy with what we have achieved.

Q: The metric for the last few seasons has been the gap to Red Bull, hasn't it? Were you expecting to be a little bit closer given the trajectory that the team had in the second half of last year?
AS: Not necessarily to Red Bull, because I think, like I've said before, Red Bull, they haven't developed their car very much last year, so we were kind of expecting that they had cashed in some important learning through last year's season that could have been capitalised on with this year's car. So in this sense we were happy that we consolidated, if anything, this gap to Red Bull. But now we want to try and reduce it if possible. We have to acknowledge that, if anything, over the winter break, Ferrari, they might have made a slightly bigger jump forward than we have done. So they consolidated themselves as the second best team. And that's definitely something that we want to try and challenge Ferrari with in the near future.

Q: Let's bring it onto this weekend. Lando Norris said yesterday in the press conference that he expects it to be harder for the team here than it was at Suzuka last time out. Can you put a little bit more flesh on the bone as to why that's the case?
AS: The reason for this kind of anticipation is that so far, statistically, when we see where we lose time, compared to some other cars, we see that when you have low-speed corners, long corners, like more than 90 degrees, then we have tendentially lose time compared to, definitely, the cars around us. And we don't gain that much also compared to cars that overall in a lap, we may be quicker but in this type of corners, we lose time. And in China, you have many of these long corners and low-speed corners. So that was the reason of our expectation from a competitiveness point of view.

Q: It's the first Sprint of the season. How do the changes to the parc fermé regulations change the team's approach to Sunday's race?
AS: Firstly, let me say that the changes in terms of parc fermé, I think they are logical, they are a good step forward in terms of regulation of a Sprint event. If anything, they give you a bit more margin to be aggressive, I would say, from a set-up point of view, trying to see if there's the last millimetre that you can exploit, for instance in terms of ride height, just to be a little specific with one example, because you know that you can adjust it after the Sprint. But in general, I have to say right now through simulations, you get already normally a decent starting point, even though here in China, because you don't have historical data, it's a little harder to do so. So definitely it's very welcome that you have the possibility to reopen the performance.

Q: Andrea, thank you very much. I'm sure there'll be more questions for you later. Mario, why don't we come to you next. Pirelli stayed at Suzuka last week for a couple of days testing. What was the aim of the test and how did it go?
Mario Isola: We wanted to finalise a new construction for 2025, because we know that all the teams are developing their cars and so the stress on the t¥re will be bigger by the end of the year and next year as well, before the big jump to 2026, and now the next step is to push more on the development of new compounds to reduce the overheating. These are the two main targets for 2025. But we want also to anticipate the start of the development of the 2026 tyres that will be different in terms of size and characteristics. And so hopefully we can start testing by September, October this year, and try to get a few information starting from this area.

Q: Can you give us a chronology of the testing plan for the season? Suzuka was test number three, I think. What is the plan for the remainder of the year in terms of focus on '25 and then '26.
MI: We have now a Wet tyre test in Paul Ricard. We have a number of tests after the races where it's possible, as well as some standalone test, until October in Mugello. We have a test after Monza. We have a test after Silverstone. We have several sessions already planned. But we know that time is running fast and we need to finalise as much as we can in advance, because then maybe the weather is not good enough. We have very limited possibilities for testing of Wet or Intermediate tyres. That's the biggest issue for us at the moment, because we want to finalise the development of an Intermediate tyre, able to work without blankets, as well as extreme Wet tyre with a better performance. We know that we have to improve the extreme Wet but we don't have many options for wet conditions. We can we can test in Paul Ricard, we can test in Fiorano, but not many other opportunities. The first day in Suzuka was raining but not enough for Wet tyres . So we were not lucky enough. We had a back-up plan for Wet tyres, but the level of water on track was not enough. And that's the biggest issue for me. The dry test has a good plan and if we can follow the plan, I'm sure that we can achieve some good results. For Wets it's a lot more complicated.

Q: Mario, you touched on 2026. What can you tell us about the dimensions of the tyres that we're going to be using?
MI: We agreed with the FIA and the teams that we want to stay on the 18-inch tyres, for a number of reasons - load capacity of the tyre, characteristics of the tyre. We believe that the first 16-inch tyre that was the initial idea was not enough. If I look at the estimated performance of the 2026 cars, with the risk of having a lot more overheating and also durability issues, that means that we have to raise the pressure too much and that's why we made some analysis with data provided by the teams and the FIA and we came to the conclusion that staying on the 18-inch, narrower tyre and a smaller diameter, especially on the front, is the right approach for 2026. And teams agreed at the end.

Q: Mario, final one for me. There's been a lot of discussion ahead of this weekend about changes made to the track surface here in Shanghai. Can you clarify what's new and how it will affect tyre performance?
MI: What's new is this layer of bitumen they put on top of the track. There was no resurface, no changes, a few changes to the kerbs but not to the track. As usual, we measure the track roughness and the level of grip with our system and we found some, let's say, inconsistencies in the grip around the circuit. I believe that also drivers highlighted this. And the most important information is that I believe the track is going to change quite a lot during the weekend, because this layer of bitumen is disappearing, especially on the race line, and not on the other lines. When they run over this layer, the level of grip is good. So I'm expecting that on the race line it will be a bit worse compared to the other parts of the track. But it's just an assumption, because we were not informed of this kind of work on the track. So, we are trying to understand ourselves what is going to happen, but a lot of track evolution is expected.

Q: If what you say plays out, it could be good for overtaking.
MI: Maybe!

Q: Thank you. Alessandro, can we just come to you next because you were one of the teams working with Pirelli in Suzuka last week. How did the test go from your point of view?
Alessandro Alunni Bravi: As always it was a good opportunity also for the team to perform the Pirelli test. It's not just the work that we provide to our tyre supplier, but we always have the opportunity, especially after a race weekend, to do some checks on the car, to see a correlation. Of course, we cannot change the car set-up during the day, but from one day to another for us it was important to understand something. We came up after the weekend with some doubts about, you know, for instance, the level of downforce for the rear wing that we have tested, especially in day two when the track conditions were more similar to the one during the Grand Prix weekend. And for us also it has been opportunity to perform a pit stop practices that is now one of our weakness. And we found some, you know, additional measures that we can apply in from this weekend. So overall, a good learning from all the team, as always, when we go on track.

Q: So more consistency with the pit stops this weekend or faster pitstops?
AAB: Consistency is our target. We know the issues that we add. We know that we are working hard back in Hinwil to fix these issues, that all the measures will be ready, you know, not for this race and I don't want to give a timeline just because, you know, we are working hard and we try to anticipate and reduce this lead time. We have other mitigation measures here that should allow us to be more consistent. And then of course the target is also to reduce the pit stop time, but I think that the main target is to not have any problem. last race, unfortunately, we know we lost the possibility to score points in the second pit stop with Valtteri, because we came in ahead of Tsunoda and we rejoined the track after four drivers, so we know that there is an issue. We are working on it. This doesn't of course affect our determination to fight for points here.

Q: The driver silly season has gone into overdrive following Alonso's decision to stay with Aston Martin. What is Sauber's position? When can we expect a decision from you on your drivers?
AAB: First, let me say that there are a lot of speculations, you know, around our teams and comments. And, of course, I don't want to comment on speculation, because we are focused on this race weekend. But there's all the teams, you know. There are 14 drivers without, let's say, a contract fixed for next year. So, as all the teams, we are speaking with different drivers. And you know, it's not the time for us to take any decision. It's time to you know, provide our drivers with a performing car. But let me say that we are happy that it seems that we can play a role, a different role in the drivers' market for the future thanks to Audi's announcement and all the investment that will be done in order to improve our team. So I think that is good news for our team. Finally we are attractive and we are not spectators, we are a player in the market.

Check out our Friday gallery from Shanghai here.