Palou: "Insane" F1 car "capable of more than I thought it was"

Driving Daniel Ricciardo’s #3 McLaren MCL36-Mercedes for the hour-long session, Palou turned in a best effort of 1min39.911sec which left him 17th fastest. Although he was two seconds slower than Lando Norris’s best effort in the other McLaren, Palou performed only long runs on Pirelli’s medium compound and never got to try out the softs.

Nonetheless, the 25-year-old Spanish ace was taken aback by the capabilities of an F1 car around the 3.426-mile 19-turn course in Austin, TX.

“It's fast, it's insane!” he enthused afterward. “Obviously, I was lucky to test before the 2021 car, so that already gave me the feeling of an F1 car. But then here, obviously, you have the traffic, you don't want to impede anybody else. And you have a car that is not yours.

“So… I was trying to take care of the car, obviously not trying to get in trouble with people that are going to race this weekend. So yeah, this track, I think it's pretty awesome for an F1 car, especially sector one super fast. And it was beautiful to drive.”

Palou admitted that “the car was capable of so much that I just overshot it in some places, which I think is good. It's better to overshoot, and then back it off if you only have an hour. And I knew we only had a set of tires, so I had to do everything in two laps. I couldn't wait a lot, so that's probably why.

“What would I improve? I think just more laps and getting obviously another set of tires at the end would have helped. But our program today was not to go fast, it was to get data for the team at the beginning, which we did… And then we focused on myself.”

Alex Palou, McLaren MCL36

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Palou was in Super Formula in Japan in the one year that IndyCar raced at COTA, in 2019, but the series’ pre-season Spring Training in 2020 was held at this venue, just before the COVID-19 pandemic not only delayed the start of the season but also caused the cancelation of IndyCar’s planned second race here.

After explaining that windblown Turn 11, before the long back straight, had proven most difficult to drive in an F1 due to the gusts, Palou explained: “This car is more sensitive to the wind than an IndyCar. It's probably close to what we feel on ovals.

“That a little bit of wind damages the car balance a lot. And it was tricky in Sector 1 today, which didn't help me obviously on my first day and I didn't want to crash on my only free practice! In an IndyCar obviously you will go a lot slower through there. 

“I trusted the car 100 percent but the car was capable of doing more than I thought it was… so I started pushing more. It's true that on the slow corners I was quite strong but I think it's easy, obviously, to get more confidence there.

“And then yeah, the last two corners I lacked a little bit, especially the second to last one. But the car could do a lot more than I thought and yeah, it was not confidence. It was that I couldn't believe how fast I could go with the car.”

Time in McLaren’s simulator, Palou admitted, had not been able to improve his wariness of shunting a car that full-time driver Ricciardo would need for second practice.

“It's not a simulator, it's a game; you can always restart,” he said. “You cannot restart here with Daniel's car.

“I'm not really afraid of getting hurt but afraid of crashing a car that has to go out now in 15 minutes and it's not mine! And you only have like, I don't know, five good laps or three good laps with the tires.”

Alex Palou, McLaren

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Palou denied feeling disappointed that he couldn’t put in a “performance run” on soft tires toward the end of the session.

“One hundred percent, I was happy,” he said. “That was the plan. And I completely understand the target of the session was not to shine, to be like, 'Hey, this is the time that we can post’.

“It was more to save some tires for Daniel, because that's going to help him now. He lost an hour, so that's going to help him and that's going to help the team.

“So yeah, I obviously push the engineers to come on, give me another tires. Like, you're not paying for it, so just give me another one! But obviously, I understand everything behind [the decision] so I would do the same if I was in their position.”