Lando Norris admitted that he was \u201cnot surprised\u201d to just miss out on pole to Max Verstappen during Sprint Qualifying at the United States Grand Prix, though the McLaren driver remains hopeful of getting \u201cback ahead\u201d during the Sprint itself.<\/p>\n
Norris<\/a> had displayed good pace throughout Friday at the Circuit of The Americas, the Briton having topped the timesheets during the sole practice hour<\/a> before leading the way in SQ1 and SQ2.<\/p>\n However, he was beaten by Verstappen<\/a> in the final moments of SQ3<\/a>, with the Dutchman\u2019s effort of 1m 32.143s putting him 0.071s clear of Norris. When asked how he felt about losing out after the session, Norris suggested that it had not been a complete shock.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course I would have loved to have been on pole, but [it\u2019s] not a surprise for us to be a bit slower than the Red Bull<\/a> lately,\u201d the 25-year-old said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m still pretty happy. I don\u2019t know how much I was off by, but there are a little couple of things probably here and there that I could have improved on, and I just caught a few bumps a little bit wrong let\u2019s say, but that\u2019s just the difficulty of this track. Otherwise all happy.\u201d<\/p>\n When informed that the gap had been 0.071s, Norris responded: \u201cOh, quite a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n Reflecting further on how the car had felt through Free Practice 1 and Sprint Qualifying, the nine-time race winner continued: \u201cI\u2019m sure if you asked most people are they confident through Sector 1 with the bumps they\u2019d probably say no, so it depends.<\/p>\n \u201cI think around here you just have to be happy with not being very comfortable, I think that\u2019s kind of the trick. Otherwise [it was] okay. I think the laps were pretty good, obviously found good steps of time throughout, just easy to catch the bump in the wrong angle or a bit too much throttle here and there over the bumps and you probably lose seven hundredths.<\/p>\n \u201cNot the end of the world, but of course [I] would have loved to have been that little bit quicker.\u201d<\/p>\n And in terms of whether he still believes the fight is on for the win in Saturday\u2019s Sprint, Norris answered: \u201cI certainly hope so, I think normally our race pace is a bit better \u2013 we\u2019ve struggled the whole year with our Quali pace, especially when it\u2019s close and it\u2019s been close today.<\/p>\n “That\u2019s why I would say I\u2019m not surprised, but we have more hopes for the race that we can get back ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n Fellow McLaren<\/a> driver Oscar Piastri<\/a> was also unable to beat Verstappen, the Australian claiming P3 with a lap time three-tenths off that set by his team mate.<\/p>\n When quizzed on where he had lost time during his effort, Piastri explained: \u201cIn quite a few places, I think. A pretty scruffy lap, to be honest. Just didn\u2019t really get it together, so in some ways I feel a bit fortunate to be third.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the pace in the car is good \u2013 it\u2019s nothing major, it\u2019s not like it\u2019s been a disastrous day at all. It\u2019s just been a little bit of a messy lap that I can hopefully tidy up for tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n Piastri will line up behind Verstappen and Norris for Saturday\u2019s Sprint and will be keeping an eye on what unfolds in front of him when the 100-kilometre dash gets underway.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll see what happens at the start,\u201d the 24-year-old said. \u201cIf I can get a good launch and try and put myself in the right spot \u2013 knowing where the right spot is in Turn 1 here is often tricky, so we\u2019ll see what happens up ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris admitted that he was \u201cnot surprised\u201d to just miss out on pole to Max Verstappen during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-222823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}