The first day of track action for the Emilia-Romagna e del Made in Italy Grand Prix saw McLaren shine once again.

In both free practice sessions, Oscar Piastri led Lando Norris at the top of the time sheets. The championship leader stopped the clocks in 1'16"545 in FP1 and then went over a second quicker to record a 1'15"293 in FP2. The gap between the Australian and his team-mate was a mere 32 thousandths in the first session and 25 in the second.

The C6, the softest compound in the 2025 range made its official debut today in Imola. During the two hours of practice the Hard was not used, not even for the scrubbing-in lap that some teams are prone to do. It indicates that the C4 will play a pivotal role in Sunday's race. The Soft and Medium tyres were used in exactly equal measure, with each completing a total of 2,307.230 kilometres, over 470 laps.

Simone Berra: "There was a great deal of interest in the C6's debut, from us as much as from the teams and drivers. After all, the Soft for this Grand Prix has never been run on these cars and the last time it was used on track dates back to the end-of-year test session held at Abu Dhabi back in December.

"At first glance, the impression is positive. The C6 proved to be an excellent qualifying tyre, allowing the drivers to push for the whole lap, without experiencing a drop in performance in the final sector. Furthermore, with careful management of the cooling phase, it proved capable of delivering at least one more competitive flying lap. In FP1, we even saw it complete a string of laps without any graining appearing.

"In FP2 all teams did long runs on the Medium which displayed relatively low degradation thanks to a strong level of pace management. Given that the track will still rubber-in more and that temperatures on Sunday should not be excessively high, combined with the layout of this track having the longest pit lane on the calendar, it's likely the teams will go for a one-stop strategy. It's no coincidence that no one used the Hard compound today, clearly preferring to keep the C4 for Sunday, also to be prepared for a Safety Car period, which is a frequent occurrence at Imola. On paper, a two-stop cannot be ruled out, far from it, but we are well aware that the teams and drivers are skilled at tyre management and with time lost in pit lane amounting to a long 27 seconds, that becomes a very important factor."

Check out our Friday gallery from Imola here.