Norris 'gutted' to miss out on pole in Austria

Lando Norris said he was 'gutted' to end up less than half a tenth of a second away from stealing pole position away from Mx Verstappen at the end of qualifying for this weekend's Austrian Grand Prix.

"I feel epic!" Norris told the media after the end of the session at the Red Bull Ring. "It puts us in a good position for tomorrow, it was probably one of my best laps I've done. It was a good feeling!"

Norris had also been on good form at the same venue last week when he was fourth in qualifying for the Styrian GP at the Red Bull Ring, and went on to start from third on the grid after a penalty drop for Valtteri Bottas.

• Read also: Verstappen narrowly on pole as Norris snatches second

But this will be the first time since he made his F1 debut in the 2019 Australian Grand Prix that Norris gets to start a race from the front row of the grid.

"I guess after last race I wanted to do that one more step, and I did two more! So yeah it's nice," he said. "Yeah, it was cool.

"I know tomorrow's race is going to be tough but we did the best job we could today," he added. "I'm a bit gutted to miss out on pole, but I'm happy with P2.

"It's tough because it's so easy to just run that little bit wide and get your lap deleted and so on," he pointed out. "It's like risk versus reward and how much do you really risk? And I think I took the risk and I ended up where I did.

"We are where we are. Throughout this year we know we don't have a good enough car comparing to Red Bull or Mercedes in general," he added. "The car is not as quick as them and a lot of things are not possible comparing to them, so I think I maximised our result and that's all I could do."

Norris benefited from being in the slip stream of the Red Bull on his final lap, which helped him pick up valuable time.

"We wanted to give him clean air for the last run, that meant he ended up at the front of queue," Red Bull boss Christian Horner explained.

“When you’re at the front of the queue you’re creating the hole in the air, and that gave Lando just behind him a slight tow."

Norris was also buoyed up by the crowds in Spielberg, one of the biggest since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic left F1 racing behind closed doors for much of 2020 and with only limited numbers allowed in so far in 2021.

Many of the fans in attendance today were decked out in orange and were clearly Dutch fans from across the nearby border who are passionate supporters of Verstappen.

But Norris felt that some of the orange army might just be lending their backing to McLaren with it's famous papaya livery.

"The fans are cool here, everyone in orange supporting McLaren, not Max!" he quipped. "It's cool to have them back."

As for the race, Norris promised to put everything he had into converting his front row starting spot into something special tomorrow.

"We'll do our best to try and take a step forwards and go in the right direction," he said. "But it wasn't like we were exactly close last weekend.

"I don't want to be too negative, I want to be optimistic as I should be," he added. "But I'm also realistic and know that it's going to be a very tough race.

"We're in the best position possible to maximise everything, but if I have a chance to go for P1, a chance to race Max and go for it, then I will," he promised. "I'm still doing that, I'm still racing – I still want to do the best I can.

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