It was Norris’ first pole since Las Vegas last year, three races from the end of his championship season, and a suggestion – at the very least – that Mercedes may not have things all their own way this year, after all.<\/p>\n
Italian Antonelli salvaged a good result for Mercedes after a difficult session.<\/p>\n
The Mercedes car has often struggled in the heat, and the 32C temperatures did not seem to do it any favours.<\/p>\n
But after not looking competitive for most of the session, Antonelli ensured he was the very last car to set a time in the final session, when the track would be at its grippiest, and it paid off.<\/p>\n
Russell took the opposite route, running first and he ended up 0.4secs back from his team-mate, not an ideal result given he already has to make up nine points on Antonelli in the championship.<\/p>\n
Ferrari and Red Bull also have major upgrade packages this weekend, and Red Bull’s seem the more effective so far.<\/p>\n
Fifth on the grid and 0.592secs from pole – even if it is a McLaren and not a Mercedes – counts as a good result in the context of a difficult start to the season.<\/p>\n
Hamilton, who has started the season well, was 0.379secs off Leclerc in the final reckoning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was Norris’ first pole since Las Vegas last year, three races from the end of his championship…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-641682","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\/641682","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=641682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}