Lando Norris rued what he described as taking “any chance to go backwards” during the Sprint Race at the Qatar Grand Prix.
Starting second on the Medium, Norris was swarmed at the start by three drivers behind on Soft tyres, ending Lap 1 in sixth after he left the door open for Max Verstappen.
Three Safety Car appearances across the 19 laps hampered the Medium runners, leaving Norris to only make headway in the closing stages as the Soft tyres rapidly degraded.
The Briton managed to swiftly overhaul both Ferraris within a matter of corners before also overtaking George Russell’s Mercedes in the dying embers to secure third behind Verstappen and team-mate Oscar Piastri.
However, Norris lamented his sluggish start, criticising himself for effectively relinquishing ground at every opportunity.
“It was very tough. Any chance to go backwards I pretty much took,” he said. “But yeah, just from the right side of the grid it was a lot worse than the left and on the Medium it was always going to be very tough.
“But I hung on for the first few laps and then just as soon as we got in the rhythm and had the Safety Cars and so on, the same as the others.
“As soon as I caught the Ferrari he had DRS so I couldn’t get him in the first lap, so I was just a little bit out of rhythm in a way to get past and keep up with what Max was doing. And then I caught the wet patch in Turn 2 when the guys crashed so I went backwards again.
“It’s just not been my weekend in a way and just made some mistakes here and there, but still fought well. I didn’t think I’d get George to be honest, but the DRS was pretty significant, so I managed to get him into Turn 1 from a long way back and finished with another double podium for McLaren, which is great.
“Obviously, a big congratulations to Oscar and to Max, both deserved.”
Failure to challenge for victory has left Norris frustrated for the third occasion this weekend, having already been annoyed by a series of errors that cost him grid position.
The McLaren ace will line up only 10th for tomorrow’s grand prix after seeing both his Q3 laps during Friday’s qualifying session deleted for exceeding track limits.
Meanwhile, Norris was well on course to usurp Piastri in the Sprint Shootout earlier on Saturday until a costly mistake on his final run left him second, critically relegating him to the dirty side of the grid for the race.
“With myself, I don’t think I’ve ever been so frustrated,” he conceded.
“But the team have done an amazing job. It’s always a ‘shoulda, woulda, coulda’ and I’ll probably get done for it, but I should have been on pole today, I should have at least had a good chance to go for it yesterday against Max.
“But I’ve just made too many mistakes which have cost me, cost me positions today, cost me positions for tomorrow and now I have to start P10 when we have a good enough car.”
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