Reigning Formula 1 world champion Lando Norris said he was shocked to take pole for the first-ever race on the new Madring circuit, putting in “one of the best laps of my career” to take down championship leader Kimi Antonelli.
At the end of a thrilling qualifying session, Antonelli went out first for the final set of flying laps around the high-speed Madring track and looked set to take his seventh pole of the campaign by going fastest.
As other rivals failed to keep up with the Italian, McLaren driver Norris pipped the Mercedes youngster by just 0.011s to set a 1m31.824s pole lap.
“I’m shocked. I’m a little bit surprised to be here now,” an elated Norris said as he took his third pole of the campaign, and his third in four grands prix.
“My god, it was probably one of the best laps I’ve done ever in my career. I’m very, very happy, very proud, very happy for the team. It was just one of those laps where everything came together.
“I had a good idea of what I wanted to do, but it was whether my brain let me do it on the last lap, and everything pretty much worked perfectly. I’m just very happy. One of those laps where you look at the lap time at the end, and you’re like. ‘Oh, shit, that was pretty good.”
Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images
The 5.4km Madring circuit spooked the drivers because of its Jeddah-like combination of high-speed corners and close proximity of the walls, which left zero room for error. That also made it one of the more enjoyable tracks on the calendar for an all-out qualifying lap.
“The adrenaline was high on the last lap;” Norris reported. “It’s just one where you’ve just got to relax, just let it all flow.
“It’s easy to get tense around here, and there’s a lot of walls that come at you pretty quickly. I just took a good breath, and everything kind of came together, so it was pretty much perfect.
“By the last corner, I thought I was in the wall, and I thought the boys were going to have to repair the car tonight.”
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