Lando Norris says his lap in SQ3 of Sprint Qualifying at the United States Grand Prix was “shocking” after taking P4 behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. But he also admitted that he struggled with car balance and set-up throughout the day.
In the only practice of the weekend, Norris placed fourth. He found himself in the same position at the end of Sprint Qualifying, as he was unable to beat the earlier set lap time from George Russell. In the end, his championship rival Max Verstappen took Sprint Pole by 0.012 seconds.
“Not very good – I’m P4. Not a great day, I’ve been struggling the whole day honestly with the balance and the set-up,” Norris answered when asked on how he reflects on the session.
“In a way [I’m] happy with P4 because I feel like it could have been a lot worse, but my lap was shocking. So yeah, not a terrible day – it could have been worse, could have been better, but I’ll take it.
He explains that he doesn’t have a new upgrade package installed to his car: “It’s not a new package, it’s pretty much the same.”
The race pace remains a big topic, as all teams enter the unknown in the F1 Sprint. Norris’ rival Charles Leclerc already said that “we don’t quite have the idea of who is going to be fast in race pace, so for now [there are] quite a lot of question marks.“
When asked on whether he has an idea on what the race pace will be looking like, Norris said: “No, not really. I hope to go forward, that’s my plan, but on pace I think we are where we deserve to be today, so my plan is to go forward, but I have no idea how much we can.”
His teammate Oscar Piastri had a difficult session, as the Australian was eliminated in SQ1, after his lap time was deleted for track limits. On his final lap, he ran over the white line at the exit of Turn 19. He starts the F1 Sprint from P16.
“Most of the lap was good,” he reflected afterwards. “I made a few mistakes in the last sector, and obviously second to last corner I just tried to go a bit too fast and that’s the result. A shame, but if there’s one good thing about Sprint weekends it’s that we have another shot tomorrow.”
Asked if the MCL38 was feeling good around the Circuit of the Americas, Piastri acknowledges that McLaren were not as strong as in recent events. But he believes that this may be because of their rivals improving race weekend by race weekend.
“It feels okay, maybe not quite as strong as what it has in the last few races,” the 23-year-old responded. “But I don’t think that’s because we’re weaker, I think the others seem a little bit stronger maybe.”
