Lando Norris admits that he “messed up” qualifying for the Qatar Grand Prix after track limit infringements saw him lose a front-row starting spot for Sunday’s race.
The Briton utilised the inherent strength of McLaren’s MCL60 car through high-speed corners at the Lusail International Circuit to post two laps that would have only been eclipsed by polesitter Max Verstappen.
However, both of Norris’ lap times in Q3 were eventually deleted for venturing outside of track limits – the last occurring at Turn 10 as he attempted to correct a minor slide.
Norris rued his costly brace of mistakes, citing that the car’s underlying potential wouldn’t make up for his qualifying mishaps.
Asked by Sky Sports F1 whether McLaren’s pace offered encouragement that he could still enjoy a strong weekend, Norris retorted: “I don’t think like that. I just think of the job I’m meant to do today, which is put in good laps, don’t make mistakes. And that’s all I did today, so not a good day for me.
“The team has done a good job. I just messed it up. I just had a correction on oversteer and went off.”
Norris’ demotion to 10th had promoted team-mate Oscar Piastri into the top three, but the Australian was the next to be hit by the stewards taking away a lap time.
Unlike Norris, Piastri was at least able to bank on having a previous effort in Q3, leaving him to line up sixth for Sunday’s race.
Piastri, who scored his maiden F1 podium last time out at Suzuka, has attributed drivers struggling to remain within the confines of the circuit to the newly resurfaced track being “very slippery”, which he contends was “not making things easy”.
“Obviously, it’s a shame that we’re a bit further back now for the main race, where the most points are, but there’s definitely points up for grabs,” he continued.
“We obviously get another crack at it tomorrow in qualifying and then the Sprint too.”
Even before his fastest effort was taken away, Piastri concedes he wasn’t entirely satisfied with his final run in qualifying.
“I’ll be honest, not particularly happy with myself. It was a very, very scruffy last lap. So yeah, a bit more on the table,” he assessed.
Although McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella accepts the result was “tough to take”, he insists that the entire side is purely fixated on recovering the lost positions from today.
“It’s a long weekend ahead of us and we don’t only want to limit damage, we want to recover entirely the positions and go back to where we belong,” he underlined.
“It’s unfortunate, it’s a bit disappointing, obviously, because the result doesn’t reflect the potential of the car, which today was again, quite strong, which is encouraging.
“So, while it’s a tough result to accept, at the same time the weekend is quite long. We have a sprint shootout, we have a sprint race, the race itself will be quite long and interesting from a tyre point of view, plenty of opportunity to recover.
“It looks like on this kind of track layout we are the second force at the moment.”
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