Lando Norris said that qualifying was a challenge at the Las Vegas GP and that it was difficult to put in a clean lap.
The McLaren driver has finished qualifying in sixth position while team-mate Oscar Piastri lines up in eighth place — the Brit starts directly alongside Max Verstappen.
Mercedes showed great performance, with George Russell taking pole-position for the night race.
Other teams making bigger gains in qualifying
After one of Norris or Piastri placed in the top 3 through each practice session, they fell away in qualifying, particularly in Q3.
The 25-year-old was in a very sarcastic mood afterwards, suggesting people who think McLaren has comfortably had the fastest car are wrong.
“I know, it’s incredible, especially because we have the fastest car by a mile, right? Yeah, weird.
“Maybe it’s the water in the tyres or something. All of this stuff, you know. They’re right about everything.”
With track conditions more akin to an ice rink, Norris talked about how the track doesn’t suit their package.
“No, it’s just this very low grip.
“It just doesn’t suit us. It doesn’t suit our characteristic of car.
“You know, we have to drive the car on the perfect limit if we want to be quick.
“It takes a lot, I think, to get everything out of our car normally, when we do, we can be quick. Here, it’s just too difficult to get everything out of the car.
“Every lap, there’s another issue or a different issue.
“It was just too much of a challenge. It’s been a challenge the last two days.
“Nothing’s changed from yesterday. It’s just others have turned up and gone lower fuel and things like that.”
Norris “made a couple of small mistakes”
”Maybe it wasn’t our best Q3. I made a couple of small mistakes, but mistakes which were just very difficult to avoid,” Norris said when asked about the final segment in Las Vegas GP qualifying.
“It was just too difficult to put a clean lap in because I’m trying to go quicker, but at the same time, I’m trying to not make any mistake. And a mistake around here can easily be one-tenth, two-tenths gone.”
The Briton further explains that the team had a different approach in Q3 to its rivals.
He reveals that initially he was happy with doing an out-lap and then starting a push lap. In Q3, they did an out-lap, a warm-up lap and then the push lap.
“We were doing different stuff to what everyone else was doing. I was normally, and I have been all weekend, happy with doing out-push.
“For Q3, we tried something else and maybe it was not the best.
”I did the warm-up-push. I don’t think it was… No magic came our way. I don’t know. I don’t think there was maybe a correct one.
“I think that wasn’t our issue today. It was more just our car balance and how we have to drive our car.”
”Too much of a challenge” in the end
“It was just very difficult today, I mean the whole weekend we’ve been struggling,” Norris told F1 TV.
“Maybe it’s not looked it as much from the timings and that kind of thing, but I think we’ve known all weekend we’re struggling a bit; just putting a lap together, just a clean lap, was just too difficult.
“[You’re] trying to find lap time but at the same time as soon as you try a little bit too much, you have another issue and it’s an issue that you’ve not had before, so it’s just too difficult, too challenging, to drive.
“There were some laps in practice where maybe you’re driving at 99 per cent and it just floats around and you’re like ‘ah, it was a good lap,’ but the chances of doing that every time were just too slim today.
“We expected to do a bit better than we did, but it just proved to be too much of a challenge.”
Lando Norris will start the Las Vegas Grand Prix one place behind his championship rival Max Verstappen. The Dutchman will secure his fourth title if he is ahead of the Brit at the end of Saturday’s race.
