Piastri<\/a> was building his way into the weekend more slowly than his team mate, but come SQ3 looked right in the mix. The Australian just did not have enough to match Norris though, and lost out to Antonelli by just 0.017s to end up P3.<\/p>\nLando Norris, 1st, 1:27.869<\/p>\n
“We came into this weekend having put a lot of hard work into these upgrades, but you can never be certain what to expect until the car is on the track. I’m incredibly happy for the whole team because, from the very first lap, it felt like we had taken a step forward. It gave me the confidence I’ve been looking for, allowing me to really push and exploit its potential straight away.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s a great start, and it feels good to be right in the mix, but we’re keeping our feet on the ground. It was incredibly close out there with several teams looking quick, and we know there are still plenty of unknowns, especially when it comes to race pace. We are still learning how to get the most out of this new package, but we’ve started as well as we could have asked for. For now, I’m happy with what we’ve achieved, and we will focus on making further improvements ahead of the sprint and Grand Prix Qualifying tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
Oscar Piastri, 3rd, 1:28.108<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m happy with that. The car had good potential, which was really nice to see. We still have things to improve, but the new package is a good step, so thank you to the whole team for their efforts. Congratulations to Lando as well – we didn\u2019t luck into today\u2019s result, the potential is there.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Ferraris looked strong throughout the day, so qualifying where we have is a really good effort. Whilst we expect the Mercedes to remain competitive, they haven\u2019t looked as dominant so far, but there\u2019s still a lot of track action to go. We\u2019ll take the learnings from today and see what we can do in the Sprint, before we switch our focus to GP Qualifying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neil Houldey, Technical Director – Applied Engineering<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re pleased with today\u2019s result and performance across the opening day of running in Miami. The car has been great for both drivers, and the first phase of our development upgrades has shown promising signs.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo come away with a Pole and third on tomorrow\u2019s Sprint grid, given where we were in the first few races, is a strong step forward. Credit to the team at the factory for this first step, from aerodynamics and design through to manufacturing, and to the crew at the track who finished putting the package together, ready for today\u2019s sessions.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we need to carry this momentum into the rest of the weekend and aim to score as many points as we can. The pace is encouraging, the execution has been excellent, and the focus is on converting this step into results while continuing to gather and exploit further performance from the entire package.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren Norris is the first non-Mercedes driver to grab pole in 2026. The World Champion looked good from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-642544","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\/642544","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=642544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}