Lando Norris and McLaren had shown flashes of front-running pace throughout the Mexico City Grand Prix weekend, but when it mattered in Q3 the 2025 World Champion had to settle for sixth on the grid.<\/p>\n
Second fastest on Friday and quickest in FP3, Norris<\/a> then topped Q2 with what he described as a rare ‘magical’ lap where everything came together.<\/p>\n But he was unable to repeat it in the crucial final session.<\/p>\n Team mate Oscar Piastri<\/a>‘s struggles offered further evidence of the McLaren<\/a>‘s difficulties, with the Australian eliminated in Q2 after qualifying 13th.<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t think anything slipped away,\u201d said Norris when asked about Q3 not working out for him. \u201cI think just the lap I did was pretty phenomenal in the car that we have. I think it shows also with where Oscar is and the struggles, we’ve been having how difficult it is to put just a lap together in this car, so I’m pretty happy with a P6, honestly.<\/p>\n \u201cYou never really know what you’re going to get, and after I did a good lap in Q2, I knew I was screwed for Q3, because the chance of me repeating that lap is impossible.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, it’s just we’re too slow. Every now and then, I can put a magical lap together, and everyone has a bit of hope \u2013 which is not a good thing, because then we see the reality in Q3 once again.\u201d<\/p>\n Norris painted a vivid picture of how difficult it is to find that perfect lap.<\/p>\n \u201cYou just always have to keep trying,\u201d Norris said. \u201cYou never know when things are just going to suddenly go your way.<\/p>\n “Like my Q2 lap, I just had an amazing headwind in Turn 12 again, one and a half tenths, just because the car grips. The next lap, I try and go the same speed in, I lose the rear, I lose a tenth. So, I\u2019ve got a two and a half tenths delta to my previous.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s too difficult, especially when I just look at the onboards from others, it baffles me how we can be quick sometimes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt always feels like there’s a little bit of hope, which is also as much as I say it wasn’t a good thing, it’s a good thing at the same time that the speed can be there if things just somehow come together. But you never know when they’re going to come together.\u201d<\/p>\n And Norris offered a blunt assessment when asked where McLaren were losing time to their rivals.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery corner,\u201d the Brit said. \u201cI mean, just look at the GPS. You’ll see how bad we are in Sector 1, Turn 1, Turn 2, Turn 3. It’s like two-tenths every single lap.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we’re two-tenths off in the first three corners, it’s impossible that you think we can even be close to the rest of the lap. I think the only corner I’m good at is Turn 7. That’s it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris and McLaren had shown flashes of front-running pace throughout the Mexico City Grand Prix weekend, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":948468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-948467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948467","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=948467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/948468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}