Norris ‘expected worse’ in Spa qualifying after day of ‘not clicking’

Qualifying day brought mixed feelings for McLaren in Belgium, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri claiming P5 and P6 – which will become P4 and P5 after Max Verstappen’s 10-place grid drop – despite showing strong pace on Friday.

With the session taking place on a damp track after heavy rainfall earlier on at Spa-Francorchamps, the drivers were faced with tricky conditions as the session played out. Given that, Norris was left satisfied with his end result, having also felt that he had not been driving at his best.

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“[It was] tough, but I’m honestly pretty happy with today,” the Briton said after the session. “I think, in the end, me and Oscar were split by half a tenth or something.

“Clearly we were lacking comparing to the cars ahead – especially the Red Bull, the Red Bull’s another level comparing to us in the rain and even in the dry they were probably still a bit stronger.

“A tough day, I expected worse and I’ve not been driving particularly well, just one of those days where it’s not clicking. Kind of similar to yesterday honestly, so just a little bit of a struggle for me, so to start with P5 I was pretty happy with.”

Pushed on whether he could still be in a good position to fight for a win on race day, Norris responded: “I mean we’re in a good spot, but we have a Red Bull on pole still and they’re clearly the quickest.

“It’ll be tough, Max is going to come through I think pretty quickly still and most likely going to be fighting him for the win. But I’m hoping that maybe with a slightly lower downforce setting that we chose today comes back into our favour tomorrow.”

HIGHLIGHTS: Watch the qualifying action from Spa as Verstappen goes fastest while Leclerc inherits pole

Piastri echoed Norris’ thoughts on the challenging session, with the Australian admitting that it had been “difficult”.

“I think our pace looked reasonable at times, or looked quite good at times I’d say,” he explained. “I think in Q3 maybe we got the tyre strategy a little bit wrong, but I think it’s so hard to predict.

“It’s still raining now and not really making anything wetter, so it’s just very difficult to predict how much it’s going to rain, how much it’s going to affect you, and we did the safe thing. In the end maybe it wasn’t quite the right move, but still not a bad effort.

“We still got two cars through into what will be the top five tomorrow, and I think Spa is definitely a track where you can overtake and make progress. Our dry pace looked competitive and I think we can hopefully show that tomorrow.”

Piastri also acknowledged that suffering a slight moment in the session may have compromised him slightly, having commented: “Yeah, it hurt me a bit. I think the first lap was really the lap where you needed to nail it on the new tyres and, yeah, just a couple of small mistakes really.

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“Of course it’s very difficult in these conditions to get everything right but, yeah, probably cost me a couple of positions.”

One week on from his debut F1 Grand Prix victory in Hungary, Piastri is hopeful of being in a position to repeat the feat in Belgium.

“I think we can still fight for the win tomorrow,” the 23-year-old remarked. “I think our pace was very strong yesterday in the dry, and I think it’s looking like a dry race tomorrow. Obviously starting a little bit further back makes life a bit more tricky but, no, still think we’re in decent shape to fight a win.”