Lando Norris claimed that people overreacted to the gap between him and his McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri after sprint qualifying at the Belgian Grand Prix weekend, but insisted “it was nothing to worry about” after he took pole position for Sunday’s race.
The McLaren driver secured pole position with a time of 1:40.562. With a gap of just 0.085 seconds, Piastri will line up beside him. Rounding out the top four is Charles Leclerc in third and Max Verstappen in fourth.
“It was a decent lap, so happy,” Norris explained to Nico Rosberg during a post-qualifying interview. “Everyone was pretty worried after yesterday. I wasn’t even that far off, it was just a couple of little issues that we had.
“So I was confident after yesterday and confident coming into today so it was nice to see I could get back to the top. Three tenths is just slipstream and not being first out of the pitlane, so it was nothing to worry about. But people like to make a lot of things up, but I felt good.
“The car has been flying all weekend, Oscar has been doing a good job all weekend, so we are pushing each other a lot.”
Rain is expected at the Spa-Francorchamps race as the lights go out at 3pm.
“I prefer it to stay dry, honestly,” Norris admitted. “Even for the fans – I think it’s rained here for the last 10 years or something, so it would be nice to have a dry Sunday.
Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
“But I don’t mind whether it’s dry or rain or somewhere in the middle, it’s normal here and I look forward to a fun race.”
Piastri started the sprint race from pole position, but lost the lead to Verstappen at Turn 5. The Australian driver admitted that he had been aiming to qualify for the grand prix in P2 after the sprint race, but was still disappointed.
“After the Sprint, I was aiming for P2,” he explained to Rosberg. “I don’t know what the weather’s going to hold tomorrow, I think it’s going to be quite different. We’ll wait and see what we get, but we’ll try to have a good race.”
Reacting to qualifying as a whole, he said: “A bit disappointing. The second lap was coming together really well, and I just made a little mistake into [Turn] 14 and lost a lot of time.
“Disappointed. I felt like the car was very good again, but it’s fine margins out there. It’s obviously not a bad place to be starting but there was more in it, which is always disappointing.”
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