Norris, whose McLaren team had struggled for pace in the opening rounds of 2022, grabbed the opportunity Imola’s capricious weather conditions provided with both hands.
After advancing to Q3 in a stop-start Q2, in which the rain that plagued practice returned, Norris found himself third on the provisional grid for Saturday’s sprint at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
In the rain-soaked top 10 shootout Norris’ early timed lap was again good enough for third, and due to two red flags, one for Valtteri Bottas’ stricken Alfa Romeo and one for a late off by Norris himself, nobody else had the chance to clock a better lap time.
That means Norris will start Saturday’s 21-lap sprint from his best grid position this season, but the Briton thinks he could have even snatched a front-row start off championship leader Charles Leclerc because his first banker lap was far from ideal.
“Yeah, I would have liked to have that last lap in because we didn’t do a lap where we were like full power, full battery,” he told Sky Sports F1.
“But the beginning of Q3 was like a two consecutive [laps] and when you do two consecutives, you have to kind of split the battery 50/50. If I managed to get a lap at the end which was 100% battery, there was a good three, four tenths left in it.
“I’m sure Charles would have improved as well but if he made a mistake and I didn’t then I could have gotten him, so you know, there was maybe a little chance to do even better and to score a second place today. But it didn’t happen because of the mistake I made in the end, so I have to be happy enough with third and honestly, it is a very good result for us.”
Lando Norris, McLaren, walks away from his car after crashing out at the end of Qualifying
Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images
With team-mate Daniel Ricciardo qualifying in sixth, Norris acknowledged McLaren would have started further back in more predictable, dry conditions. While the Woking squad did introduce incremental updates to its MCL36,…
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