Lando Norris has confirmed he was ‘not surprised’ by his and McLaren’s severe lack of pace during qualifying for the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix.
Norris and McLaren enjoyed a near flawless Sprint Qualifying and Sprint Race, taking pole position and dominating Saturday’s race, fuelling hopes of a performance turnaround.
However, qualifying for Sunday’s race proved to be somewhat different, the pace of the MCL40 evaporating, with Norris and teammate Oscar Piastri struggling for pace.
Norris ended Q3 in fourth, while Piastri languished down in seventh, with both drivers facing an uphill struggle to replicate their Sprint Race explolits.
After qualifying, Norris admitted he and McLaren were “not surprised” by the result.
“We maximised everything,” he said to media, including Motorsport Week.
“I said yesterday already that it was close between the Mercedes. The Mercedes around every corner was pretty much just as quick or quicker than us.
“They just had some issues and clearly Max and the Red Bull was also very strong as well.
“I’m not surprised, I don’t think as a team we’re surprised. We’re probably surprised we struggled as much as we did today, but I don’t think in terms of order and pace of the Mercedes we’re surprised at all.”
Lando Norris explains pace deficit in F1 Miami GP qualifying
Explaining the reason behind the dramatic pace drop off, Norris indicated multiple factors that made a repeat perfomance of Sprint qualifying impossible.
“We certainly had some more issues with deployment and things like this, he said.
“I started my final lap with just less deployment for some reason.It just didn’t go to the full pack, so I was screwed from the off. It was definitely not as clean of a run from ourselves.
“I need to understand why, but I think the temperature is a little bit hotter at this point of the day and the wind is a little bit different.At the same time, the tarmac has been rubbed in a lot more by all the categories and Porsche and things.
“Certain lines that I could do yesterday, I couldn’t do today to the same extent. Little things, I think a lot of little things.
“It’s not like we’re miles off. It’s still over two tenths, but maybe more, three tenths. It’s not like a night and day.I think it’s more the others improved and maybe we struggled a little bit more. You see that in that gap.
“Otherwise, I need to go and see the data”.
Norris’ admission of qualifying issues in Miami is the first indicator of the knife-edge of performance now facing teams following F1’s enforced break.
McLaren has proven that getting setup right reaps big rewards, but even a fraction of a miscalculation can prove disastrous.
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