Second quickest on the opening day, Lando Norris warns McLaren fans not to get carried away.

"To begin, the day was not so good," he replied, when asked how he felt after finishing second in FP2, just 0.019s down on Carlos Sainz.

"Really, the only run we looked competitive was this final run, which makes us look very good," he continued, "but I'd say we're not as good as what it looks.

"I think with the other tyres, with the medium and the hard, we struggled quite a bit more," he admitted. "Also on the race runs we struggled quite a bit more than we did on the one-lap soft. It's a C5, so it's obviously a soft tyre and provides a lot of grip for one lap, which is always a good thing for us.

"I'm happy, we took some good steps forward and made some improvements today, but we're definitely still not in a competitive enough place."

Like it rivals, as is the case every year when visiting Monza, there are a raft of track related low-downforce updates, however the Briton fears that drag is still an issue.

"It's clear where we're still losing," said Norris. "The majority of it is still in the straights comparing to some of the other cars. The Ferrari is unbelievably quick in the straight, but I think we always expected them to be quick here, they have a good balance, in the very slow-speed corners they're always very competitive, and they're always slippery in the straights.

"I think we have a few ideas and things to work on," he added. "We took a good step forward between P1 to P2, so maybe a bit more of that, even though it's not as easy as the step we did, a little bit more in that direction would be helpful."

Teammate Piastri, isn't quite so downbeat.

"It feels reasonable," said the Aussie. "I think whenever you come to Monza and take all the downforce off the car it never feels that nice, but our pace over one lap seems to be there or thereabouts.

"I think we still have some things to work on," he admitted. "Qualifying is not the be all and end all here, so we really need to factor in Sunday as well. But yeah, a decent first day, tried a few things.

"I think we're quick enough to hopefully, with the ATA, we should be able to do a good enough job to get out of Q1 and get into Q3. We'll see how we go, but I think as long as we make it through to when we put softs on in Q3, then the car should be OK."

Check out our Saturday gallery from Monza here.