Lando Norris said that taking an "all-or-nothing" approach in today's Chinese GP Sprint qualifying session in Shanghai had paid off after he walked away with pole position after his crucial final lap was reinstated.
Norris had been second quickest in the first round of Sprint qualifying, and was still in the top five when the rain started to fall in SQ2.
He was the first man out on track with intermediates at the start of the wet final round, but he ran wide at turn 1 on his first lap and had his penultimate time deleted for exceeding track limits at turn 16.
His final lap was his best yet and he took provisional pole, only for that too to be deleted. He had been deemed to have crossed the white line with all four tyres at the final corner immediately before starting before his flying lap
The FIA deleted the lap he went off on, as well as the following lap which is the usual decision to stop drivers from gaining an advantage in exit speed by not respecting the last turn.
However in this case race control reviewed the situation and determined that Norris had not gained any advantage by running wide. In fact McLaren team boss Andrea Stella estimated Norris had lost at least three tenths by going off.
Had Norris gained an advantage by going off, or if the pre-race event notes had explicitly stated the lap time would be deleted, then the deletion would have stood. Instead, race control quickly manually reinstated the time.
"If he'd been off at the last corner it kind of has implications for the following lap," Stella told Sky Sports F1. "Effectively, Lando loses almost three tenths because he's been off at the previous corner.
"The following lap is the pole lap and that lap is completely clean so there's no problem at all," he continued. "It was reinstated by the FIA themselves, because you go off out of this corner, you launch at a much lower speed.
The original decision left Norris facing a start from P9 tomorrow, but once race control rescinded the penalty the reinstated time of 1:57.940s was over a second quicker than that of next-best Lewis Hamilton.
"The last lap was all-or-nothing," Norris told the media in parc ferme after the end of the session. "The first two I aborted on both.
"It was getting wetter and wetter so actually the conditions for the final two laps were a lot worse than the second lap at least," he continued. "I was a little bit nervous that I made a few mistakes, started to aquaplane quite a bit.
"But it was good fun!", he added. "It gets your heart going. And to end up on top is exactly what we wanted.
"[Pole] is a bit of a surprise, but I'm very happy the team have done a good job, the car is feeling good, and so am I. And it's paying off."
Norris said that the secret of McLaren's success today had been preparation. It's te first time in five years that F1 had raced at Shanghai International Circuit making it the first outing for current ground effect cars.
"We did some of our homework this morning," Norris explained. "We did some consecutive laps to try and understand but depends what the weather is. There's still a chance of rain tomorrow."
Norris admitted that he didn't have a clue how the rest of the weekend would turn out. "If it's like this then I think the chances are relatively decent, but the race is still very different to qualifying.
"I'm sure everyone's going to catch up a bit tomorrow, but the pace is good whether it's wet or dry and I think we're in a good position."
Norris' team mate Oscar Piastri will start from eighth after his gearbox went into neutral coming out of the chicane on the crucial final flying lap asa a result of wheel spin on the wet track.
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