(Field Level Media) \u2013 Lando Norris\u2019 attempt to rewrite his personal history at the Las Vegas Grand Prix couldn\u2019t have started any better.<\/p>\n
McLaren\u2019s championship front-runner will start the Saturday race from the front of the grid after clinching first place with a timely final lap at the conclusion of the third and final stage of a rainy qualifying session on Friday.<\/p>\n
Norris eclipsed Red Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen by 0.323, depriving the reigning four-time champion of what would have been his eighth pole of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was pretty nasty,\u201d Norris said of the conditions. \u201cIt was so slippery. The amount of wheel spin in certain places was difficult. It was difficult to lock the tires. Everything was pretty tough, so I\u2019m even more satisfied with the end result because of how tricky everything was out there today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Friday marked the first wet qualifying session since the 2024 Sao Paulo Grand Prix last November, where Norris also claimed pole position for that weekend\u2019s Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
Norris, 26, can move within proverbial inches of his first World Drivers\u2019 Championship with a win \u2014 or even a positive result \u2014 on Saturday. Norris previously struggled at the Las Vegas Strip Circuit, retiring after a scary crash in 2023 before registering a disappointing sixth-place finish in 2024.<\/p>\n
Williams\u2019 Carlos Sainz, who qualified in second at Las Vegas in 2023 and 2024, will start third on the grid on Sunday after notching another impressive performance on the Strip. McLaren\u2019s Oscar Piastri, who is second in the championship standings, qualified fifth after going off the track on his final lap.<\/p>\n
Ferrari\u2019s Lewis Hamilton, typically a star in the rain, will start Saturday\u2019s race dead last after being eliminated with a P20 finish in the first qualifying session. Hamilton aborted his final lap after a miscommunication with his team about whether his time was safe before he began the last-second attempt. Hamilton, in his 19th Formula 1 season, qualified last on pure pace for the first time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a yellow flag in the last corner and then going into turn 17, there was a yellow flag, so I had to lift, came across the line and it was red,\u201d Hamilton said. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t have the grip anyway, so I don\u2019t think it would have made much difference.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Field Level Media) \u2013 Lando Norris\u2019 attempt to rewrite his personal history at the Las Vegas Grand Prix…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-301166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}