⁷After a run of strong results in recent races, Lando Norris suffered a nightmare qualifying session for the Mexico Grand Prix and faces an uphill battle to recover from near the back of the grid in Sunday's race.
Norris had finished Friday's practice in second place behind Max Verstappen and the McLaren driver had been expecting to feature in the battle for the front row of the grid in qualifying. But it was not to be.
A series of mishaps and miscues in Q1 meant that everything hinged on his final run, only for him to be forced to back off when yellow flags came out for a spin by Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso.
"We had an issue on the first run, which we are reviewing," commented McLaren team principal Andrea Stella. "This meant we couldn’t put a banker on the timing sheet on the medium tyre.
"From there our session was compromised by an imperfect lap from Lando when on soft tyres and then by the yellow flag on the final lap at an unfortunate time. This sequence of events prevented us from progressing to Q2."
The result left Norris 19th at the end of the session, although he will advance one place for the start of the race thanks to a grid penalty for AlphaTauri's Yuki Tsunoda. It'll be hard work if he's to extend a run of ten consecutive points-paying race weekends in 2023.
“Today’s result is obviously not what we wanted," Norris acknowledged. "An issue with the car on the first run meant we didn’t set the banker lap we needed, and I made a mistake on my second run. I locked up, I went off on my one lap.
"I didn’t get a chance to complete my third lap due to the yellow flag, but that’s the way it is sometimes. It’s frustrating as the car was good and the speed was there."
Norris had started qualifying on a set of mediums while most of those around him were straight onto the faster soft tyres, but he insisted that he had been happy with the team decision to use the medium compound initially.
“The pace was good [on the medium, but] I got told to box so something obviously wasn’t right," Norris told Sky Sports F1 after the end of the session. “But that wasn’t the problem, I just made some mistakes on my one lap that I had.
“So yeah, that one opportunity, that one lap that I was given, I didn’t put together and I went off and that was it," he said, taking full blame for missing out. "I had one lap and I didn’t do it, so it’s on me.”
“We will speak about it after," he shrugged. "I’ll bounce back tomorrow.”
His team mate Oscar Piastri went on to prove that the MCL60 had a lot of speed up its sleeves by getting through to the final round and qualifying in P7, although the Aussie felt he could and should have done better.
"The pace looked good early on, we had a decent Q1, a decent Q2, we just struggled in Q3 with grip for some reason," he said. “It just didn’t really come together in Q3 and I don’t really know why. That’s probably the most frustrating part at the moment.
"We’ll have a look and see what we can do tomorrow," he added. “Seventh on the grid [means] we’re still in contention for strong points, and this circuit always throws up opportunities.”
Piastri will start the Grand Prix as the filling in a Mercedes sandwich, with Lewis Hamilton right ahead and George Russell immediately behind.
"I think a lot of the cars around us [are threats],” he accepted. “I think they’re all going to be quick around us so it’s going to be difficult to overtake, but we’ll try our best.”
"Oscar lines up in a strong position to score points tomorrow," insisted Stella.
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