Lando Norris is hoping for dry, straightforward sprint race in Brazil so that he might convert pole to victory in a cruise.

He’s not going to get it.

An extratropical cyclone is forming off Brazil’s southern coast and will bring severe storms to the state of Sao Paulo throughout Saturday.

The forecast for Interlagos, around 50 kilometres inland, is dire.

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Brazil’s National Institute of Meteorology says the area should expect between 50 and 100 millimetres of rain, including at a peak intensity of 60 millimetres per hour, that is likely to bring flooding to the area. Hail is also forecast.

The institute is also warning of intense winds of between 60 and 100 kilometres per hour likely to cause power cuts and falling trees.

The worst of this weather is likely to come up from the south in the early hours of Saturday morning (local time) and ease through the day, though rain is forecast throughout Saturday and remains a background risk even into Sunday, which is now predicted to be much calmer and clearer.

But it’s a significant complication not only for the championship battle, for which this could be a pivotal weekend, but for the sport itself, which has limited room to manoeuvre around the weather thanks to the sprint format in use this weekend.

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WHAT ARE THE SCENARIOS?

Formula 1 experienced similar circumstances last season, forcing a significant reorganisation of its schedule to ensure all sessions could be completed.

The difference, however, was that the inclement weather arrived in the middle of Saturday, after the sprint race. The sport then postponed qualifying to Sunday morning to give it as large a window as possible to complete the grid-setting session before the grand prix.

Because the forecast is so bad throughout Saturday, the same strategy can’t be applied.

There are two key stipulations F1 must work around.

The first is that the regulations require that the sprint race must be completed three hours before grand prix qualifying — a requirement to give teams time to repair any damage from the sprint as well as make set-up changes for qualifying.

The second is that qualifying must be completed before sunset.

The sprint is scheduled for 11:00am (local time; 1:00am AEDT) and lasts around 30 minutes. Qualifying is set down for 3:00pm (5:00am AEDT) and will run for an hour.

Sunset is just after 6:20pm (8:20am AEDT), although if the weather is heavy, light will become an issue earlier than that.

That means the sprint can be delayed for a maximum of around two hours before it would affect grand prix qualifying.

So what are the options?

Given the relatively low priority given to sprints, it’s difficult to imagine F1 pre-emptively moving qualifying to Sunday to devote the entirety of Saturday to the short race.

If the weather is too grim, it’s likely the sprint will be abandoned at a predetermined cut-off point to maximise the chance of getting qualifying underway.

If the sprint is called off with fewer than 50 per cent of the distance — 12 of 24 laps — completed, no points will be awarded.

Only two of those laps have to be under green flags — that is, the rest can be completed behind the safety car.

If the weather remains too heavy to run qualifying, expect the sport to postpone it to Sunday, as was the case last year, though it’s unlikely to do so without at least trying to get it going as scheduled.

Last season the sport waited almost two hours before giving up and moving the session to Sunday morning.

In the unlikely event that rain defies the forecast and washes out Sunday morning as well, regulations introduced this year — following uncertainty in Brazil last season — mean that the grid will be arranged in championship order.

That means Norris would start on pole alongside Oscar Piastri, with Max Verstappen third.

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McLAREN BACK TO ITS BEST IN BRAZIL

But there’s a long way to go — a lot of water to flow under the bridge, if you will — before we get to that stage.

For now Norris can still hope that the sprint will get underway in raceable conditions to allow him to pile more pain onto teammate Piastri.

The Briton enjoyed a strong Friday, and not just because he ultimately controlled the battle for pole position.

The sole practice session suggested he was starting the weekend a step behind Piastri. Despite the Englishman topping the session, he was consistently around 0.25 seconds slower than Piastri on their first runs on the medium tyre. He edged ahead only on the final run, when Piastri failed to string together his best sectors; had he done so, his usual advantage would’ve been restored.

But come qualifying Norris turned the tables. He was faster than Piastri in all three segments, and both his laps in SQ3 were good enough for pole position.

“Not at my best, but good enough today,” he summed. “I struggled a little bit more in FP1.

“It’s an amazing track to drive, but it’s easy to get just timings wrong, bumps wrong.

“I still got a couple of little bits here or there wrong on my final lap, but still quick enough.”

Converting, though, is another story entirely.

“Of course we have to prepare for both [wet and dry] conditions,” he said. “I expect the morning to be heavy rain and incredibly windy at the same time, so let’s wait and see what’s going to happen.

“In dry conditions I’m confident at the minute. I think the car’s been performing well — not nice enough that I’m happy about everything. I’ve got some things to maybe improve on for the quali tomorrow, but the sprint race, let’s see.”

‘Will be close’ Piastri 3rd in sprint | 01:41

PIASTRI’S BOUNCE-BACK A QUALIFIED SUCCESS

While Norris’s momentum appears unabated, Piastri was back on form, at least compared to his disastrous rounds in Austin and Mexico City.

He was on the pace from the first lap of the day, and though he missed the front row, he was only 0.185 seconds off the pace.

It was perhaps a slight let-down for the Australian, not only after he’d started so strongly but also after lapping just 0.043 seconds slower than Norris in SQ2, when a front row at least seemed on the cards.

But Piastri failed to follow Norris up the road in the pole-decided qualifying segment.

The halting of his progress came down to the tyre rules for sprint qualifying, with all drivers required to use mediums in SQ1 and SQ2 and then softs in SQ3.

Neither McLaren driver — in fact almost no-one in the entire field — used the softs during practice, meaning its performance was a step into the unknown at the crucial moment of qualifying.

Piastri failed to improve on his fastest medium-tyre SQ2 time. He was one of six drivers who were slower in SQ3.

“The soft just was a bit different to what I expected,” he explained. “A couple of big moments on my first [SQ3] lap, which wasn’t ideal. That was a bit of a shame.

“I would’ve liked a little bit more, but we can definitely fight with what we’ve got, and there’s obviously a lot more points on Sunday.”

The difference between him and Norris was made almost entirely in the first sector and specifically through the esses. Despite being earlier on the brakes, Piastri ends up slightly off line, compromising his run all the way down to turn 4, by which point he’s already 0.15 seconds adrift.

He’s also a little slower getting on the throttle through virtually every corner on the soft tire, which makes up the rest of his deficit.

But this is all well within the margin for error for Piastri relative to his teammate — and, crucially, is important information for the Australian ahead of grand prix qualifying, assuming dry tyres are used, and the grand prix itself, when the softs are likely to get a run.

“Ultimately I felt much happier today than the last couple of weeks,” he said. “In sprint quali we changed a few things which took a little bit of getting used to again, but ultimately I’m pretty happy.

“We’ll see what weather we get, but I’ll try and take whatever opportunities there are. I think the pace in the car has been really, really good today, so hopefully that translates to whatever we get.”

Piastri confident ahead of Brazil GP | 02:42

‘UNDRIVABLE’ CAR A QUANDARY FOR VERSTAPPEN

“The car is completely broken, it’s just undrivable.”

It was a Verstappen comment transported directly from the first half of the season amid a performance that could so easily have been from the middle months of the campaign too.

Despite looking relatively competitive early in sprint qualifying, Verstappen could get no closer than 0.337 seconds to Norris’s sprint pole time, leaving him sixth on the grid and signally major danger for his narrow championship hopes.

The signs were there early. Verstappen didn’t complete a performance run in practice, though he attempted one — he abandoned it around halfway through to return to pit lane, having not felt the car was close enough to its sweet spot.

While he’d lose only a handful of points if he were to finish in the same place in the sprint — though that’s unlikely given an Aston Martin will start ahead of him, even if it’s driven by Fernando Alonso, and considering his mastery of wet weather in Interlagos — his and the team’s lack of answers for the set-up question posed by Interlagos is the more concerning element of this performance.

“A lot of vibration in the car, a lot of ride problems,” he said. “Not what we want.

“But besides that, I think also we just don’t have the grip. The middle sector is terrible. I just can’t get the car to turn, but at the same time also I can’t really rely on the rear [for grip].

“For us it’s just quite poor, I would say.

“I think it’s quite clear that we are lacking something, and I’m not expecting to suddenly be miles better in the wet, but we’ll see tomorrow.”

Part of the problem appears to be the combination of this circuit’s bumpiness and undulation — plus the kerbs — which requires the car to run at a higher height if plank wear is marginal.

We saw, for example, in FP1 Yuki Tsunoda spin off the road and pick up damage riding the kerbs at turn 4. Verstappen was also spotted saving several moments at the same part of the track.

Rising the ride height appears to have put the RB21 out of its ideal window, making it less predictable and leaving it generating less downforce — and leaving Verstappen battling uphill to keep his title hopes alive.

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‘SLOW’ FERRARI’S DIRE DAY

There was a clear Friday winner in the battle for second in the constructors championship, with Andrea Kimi Antonelli an excellent second and George Russell fourth.

Ferrari, meanwhile, was way, way adrift.

Lewis Hamilton was knocked out of qualifying 11th after being sent out into traffic on his final out-lap of SQ2 and missing the chequered flag, while Charles Leclerc laboured to a barely better eighth. The two were closely matched throughout, suggesting this is all Ferrari has for this circuit.

“The team thought we were a lot faster than we are,” Hamilton said. “I gave it everything, and that’s ultimately what matters most. We just weren’t quick enough.”

While Hamilton took the team’s downturn in his stride — “I just have to have some fun from [11th] — Leclerc was far more frustrated about the car’s lack of performance.

“Not happy,” he said. “The car was very slow today.

“It didn’t feel that bad but we are slow, so we’ve got something to work on and try and improve for tomorrow.

“Nothing makes me think we are out of place in terms of set-up, so I’ll try something — whether it’s going to be better or worse, I’m not sure.”

Ferrari is the team most marginal on plank wear this year, having had one car disqualified for excessive wear in China. It’s become something of a meme that both Hamilton and Leclerc are now asked to lift and coast — lift off the throttle and let the aerodynamics slow the car — at the end of the straights to prevent the plank from being pushed into the tarmac, ensuring the car’s legality.

It’s therefore not totally surprising that the team would struggle at a circuit that puts pressure on plank wear, particularly given everyone set up their cars for sprint qualifying with an eye for a likely wet sprint.

Then again, the team appeared to have got on top of its issues in recent months. Austin, for example, is a bumpy, undulating track, and Leclerc finished on the podium there.

That perhaps could be a source of hope for Ferrari fans, but it’s a long way to the front of the field from where it started on Friday.