Lando Norris told his McLaren team he should have put the car on pole position after today’s qualifying session.
He was initially told he’d qualified on the front row before learning his second lap time in Q3 had been deleted for a track limits infringement as his first had been.Norris had been the closest challenger to eventual pole position winner Max Verstappen earlier in the session. Although more than half the drivers had lap times deleted for track limits infringements, only Norris failed to post a valid time in Q3.
He lost a total of three lap times over the course of the session, beginning in Q1 where he ran off-track at turn five, the corner which caught out most drivers during the session. Norris repeated that error at the beginning of Q3, leaving himself with only one chance to set a time in the final shoot-out of pole position.
After a tentative start to his final lap, and successfully navigating turn five, Norris looked on course to set a time until a snap of oversteer sent him off at turn 10 again.
“Fucking shit, what the fuck am I doing?” said Norris after completing his final lap in Q3. “I’m just so shit sometimes.”
As it took several minutes for the stewards to delete his lap time, as Norris arrived back in the pits his team still believed he had qualified second, less than three-tenths of a second off Verstappen’s pole position time.
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After being told he’d qualified second Norris replied: “Are you joking? I’m just so stupid. I should be on pole. I just fuck it up too much”
However shortly after climbing out of his car Norris learned he will start Sunday’s grand prix from 10th instead of second.
“A disappointing day,” he said afterwards. “I had a correction and oversteer, went off and the lap time was deleted.
“I should have been much higher up today. The pace of the car has been amazing, the team have done a great job. I made too many mistakes and paid the price.”
As this is a sprint race weekend, Norris we’ll have another opportunity to qualify again tomorrow.
“There are definitely opportunities to recover across the weekend,” he said. “But right now I’m frustrated that I didn’t get the job done in quali, which is to put in good laps. We’ll work hard to prepare for the sprint [race] tomorrow and try and make up for it on Sunday.”
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Stephen Taylor
6th October 2023, 22:08
Lando chillax man these things happen . You are only human chin up . The pace of the car is positive and tomorrow is another day . Try not to dwell too much on it and use this as a positive.
Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
6th October 2023, 23:04
Is this website broken or something? 3 articles with a load of text where the thumbnail should be and not even a picture where there should be one once you go to it. Sometimes there is an empty square, sometimes nothing. Seems very unstable. The supposed pictures when you click on their title that you can’s see take you to a dead page too.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
7th October 2023, 8:03
Yes, I’m getting the same issue, was wondering if it was maybe on my end until I saw you have it too.
Doggy
7th October 2023, 10:59
+1
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
7th October 2023, 2:21
I think Lando has this one. Just needs to run over Max and take the win.
Jere (@jerejj)
7th October 2023, 6:29
Too slow for pole anyway.
Todfod (@todfod)
7th October 2023, 7:05
True. No one would have matched Verstappen. He threw away a P2 though.. Mclaren looked like the 2nd quickest team in Q2 and Q3
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
7th October 2023, 8:06
Agree, 2nd was max possible, even so that’s a shame, norris lost 2 times for track limits in q3 and a massive amount of places, which could hurt them in the fight vs aston points wise.
Armchair Expert (@armchairexpert)
7th October 2023, 7:27
Why? Are you accusing Norris of lying? He has all the data and he’s the driver, so it has to be true. Therefore it means McLaren has quicker car than Red Bull, but as always only Max squeezed everything from his machine, 1.7s quicker than team mate, while both McLaren driver even before laptimes deletion underperformed by 0.3-0.5s.
Nick T.
7th October 2023, 7:57
Pole. LOL. That rhymes.
ryanoceros (@ryanoceros)
7th October 2023, 10:00
Thems the brakes. Should have banked a lap.