United States Grand Prix pole winner Lando Norris says he put “everything on the line” to beat Max Verstappen to the top spot in qualifying.
Norris took provisional pole in Q3 with his first run, just three-hundredths of a second faster than the championship leader. That proved to be the pole time as their second runs ended with a yellow flag for George Russell’s turn 19 crash.
Although he had been set to improve on his final lap before having to abort, Norris believes he still got the best he could out of his car on his first attempt.
“It was a beautiful lap,” Norris said after qualifying. “I was not going to go much quicker than what I did.
“You know when you just do a lap and you think ‘damn, it’s going to be tough to beat that’. But I put everything on the line. It’s what we needed to do. We’ve been on the back foot pretty much the whole weekend.
“We’re not at the pace of the Ferraris or the Red Bulls, so I had to do something and today I did that. So a cool lap and a nice way to start the race tomorrow.”
In the earlier sprint race, Norris had started from fourth on the grid and risen to second place before fading with front tyre wear in the later laps and eventually losing out to Carlos Sainz Jnr finishing in third. Asked if he had made any set-up changes between the sprint race and qualifying to address his tyre degradation problems, Norris said he had.
“We’ve already made some changes to hopefully improve that direction,” he said. “But time will tell.
“We’ll work hard, we’ve done a good job so far. Box number one ticked. But tomorrow is going to be a tough race.”
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2024 United States Grand Prix
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