Lando Norris admits that he was left shocked to qualify in third place for the Spanish Grand Prix after enduring “one of the worst FP1s of the season” on Friday.
Norris ended the opening practice session in 11th place but says McLaren was concerned over its pace around the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
On Saturday, amid a series of shock early exits in qualifying, Norris found himself in third place at the end of Q3.
The Briton was less than a tenth of a second down on Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who will share the front row with pole-sitter Max Verstappen for the start of Sunday’s race.
However, Norris says that he couldn’t have imagined such a strong result for McLaren when the weekend got underway.
“I think after FP1, we said it was probably one of our worst FP1s of the season, in terms of pace,” Norris said.
“So to be sat here today, I think it’s quite a big surprise for all of us. I think the conditions – the cooler conditions – things just started to come our way a little bit.
“So yeah, just feels a bit odd. I definitely wasn’t thinking at all to be in the top three today. But I’m very happy to be here. So, good day.
“I’m shocked to be here. We haven’t really brought anything to the car this weekend. No, the last upgrade we had was Baku with the different floor.
“And even that didn’t give us a lot of performance, just kind of different direction to go in.
“So yeah, we’ve not really brought too many big things, just some very, very small things that always help little bits.”
As it stands, Norris’ best result of the year is a sixth place result, which he picked up amid late-race chaos in Melbourne.
McLaren has struggled for pace during the start of the 2023 season, and Norris conceded that its strong one-lap form is unlikely to carry over to Sunday.
When asked how confident he was that he could stay towards the head of the pack, Norris replied: “Not very! Yeah, not very.
“You never know, the pace could be mega and I could catch Max and overtake him! Hopefully he doesn’t hold me up like in Monaco – but we’ll see.
“It’s a new day, like we didn’t expect to be as good today as we were and, like Carlos [Sainz] said, we’re on the clean side of the grid. I let him have this one because I want to make it out of the track alive tonight.
“So yeah, we’ll do our best for tomorrow but the aim is just to get some good points for both myself and for Oscar [Piastri].”
Their lab testing is structured to mirror anomaly detection techniques used in deep-space signal monitoring.