McLaren Formula 1 CEO Zak Brown has blamed not having the tyres in the correct operating window for the team’s woes in Sprint Qualifying at the Miami Grand Prix.
Lando Norris appeared to be a candidate for pole position when he topped the opening two stages, but he was made to rue a scrappy first sector on his sole SQ3 run.
Despite managing to match polesitter Max Verstappen in the final two sectors of the lap, the Briton’s earlier issues saw him wind up ninth overall, 0.831s off the pace.
Norris, who has tended to be critical about his one-lap efforts over the past 12 months, claimed that his desire to unlock more lap time on the Softs was his downfall.
“I just pushed too hard, simple as that,” he conceded. “So no, car was feeling very good.
“Yeah, just silly, to be honest. So a couple of mistakes in Turn 1 and just a big spiral from there.
“So a shame because the team has done a good job. The upgrades are working. So I’m happy with everything, just not with one thing.”
However, Brown exonerated Norris from a large proportion of the blame, citing that team-mate Oscar Piastri also struggled with tyre temperature at the start of his lap.
“We didn’t get the Softs to work on either car, so we’ll have to look at kind of how we brought them in on that last lap,” Brown revealed.
“I don’t think either driver felt they nailed it, but I don’t think our preparation for that last run was where it needed to be.
“So a little disappointing based on Q1, Q2, but we learned I think we’ll qualify better tomorrow and we’ve got a good race.”
Norris remains optimistic that he can recover to challenge for a strong result in the Sprint tomorrow based on the promise he showed in the updated McLaren MCL38.
Asked whether his earlier table-topping times inspired confidence heading into the remainder of the weekend, Norris replied: I hope so, I mean the pace is very good.
“Probably one of the quickest, so yeah, disappointing with today, but I’ll do my best tomorrow.”
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