Lando Norris was pleased to \u201cget back to the top\u201d by claiming pole position in Qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix, while McLaren team mate Oscar Piastri was left disappointed to miss out on P1, having felt that there \u201cwas more in it\u201d.<\/p>\n
With Norris<\/a> going quickest in Q1 and Piastri<\/a> setting the pace in Q2, it was Norris who went quickest during the opening laps of Q3 on a lap of 1m 40.562s \u2013 a time that remained fastest across the final runs.<\/p>\n While the Briton was \u201cnot the happiest\u201d<\/a> with his third place in Friday\u2019s Sprint Qualifying, he insisted that he had never been concerned about the remainder of the weekend after reflecting on his result in Saturday\u2019s Qualifying session<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a decent lap,\u201d said Norris. \u201cI\u2019m happy. I don\u2019t know why everyone was pretty worried after yesterday. I wasn\u2019t even that far off. It was just a couple of little issues that we had.<\/p>\n \u201cI was confident after yesterday and coming into today, so it\u2019s nice to see that I could get back to the top.\u201d<\/p>\n Pushed on where the improvement had come from, the 25-year-old responded: \u201cThree-tenths is just slipstream and not being first out of the pit lane. It\u2019s nothing to worry about. People like to make a lot of things up, but I\u2019ve felt good. The car has been flying all weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cOscar has been doing a good job all weekend, so we\u2019re pushing each other a lot, like he said. It\u2019s tough, because you see where your strengths and weaknesses are easily and you learn from each other quickly, so it\u2019s a good but tough battle that we have at the minute.\u201d<\/p>\n While the track action during Friday and Saturday has taken place in dry conditions, the possibility of rain remains for Sunday. Norris, however, is hoping that the weather will stay as it has been for race day.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d prefer it to stay dry, honestly, even for the fans,\u201d the eight-time race winner reflected. \u201cIt\u2019s rained here for the last 10 years or so, so it would be nice to have a dry Sunday. But I don\u2019t mind whether it\u2019s dry or rain or somewhere in the middle. It\u2019s normal here and I look forward to a fun race.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other side of the McLaren<\/a> garage, Piastri improved on his final effort but was unable to better Norris\u2019 lap, the Australian ending Qualifying 0.085s adrift.<\/p>\n When quizzed afterwards if he was content or disappointed with his P2 result, Piastri answered: \u201c[It\u2019s] a bit disappointing. The second lap was coming together really well and I just made a little mistake into [Turn] 14 and lost a lot of time so, yeah, I\u2019m disappointed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt felt like the car was good again and it\u2019s fine margins out there. Obviously it\u2019s not a bad place to be starting, but I think there was more in it, which is always disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n In terms of whether he had been left surprised by Norris\u2019 improvement over the weekend \u2013 or if he felt that the Briton was learning from his own data \u2013 Piastri reflected: \u201cI don\u2019t know. I think we\u2019re a good team mate pairing and we learn a lot from each other every weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what makes us such a good team, but it also makes it difficult when you\u2019re trying to fight each other. I did an okay job today, just didn\u2019t quite execute when it mattered, and it\u2019s a bit of a shame.\u201d<\/p>\n Following his second place result in the Sprint<\/a> \u2013 after starting from pole position before losing out to Max Verstappen<\/a> on the first lap \u2013 Piastri joked: \u201cAfter the Sprint, I was aiming for P2!<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what the weather is going to hold tomorrow, I think it\u2019s going to be quite different. We\u2019ll wait and see what we get but try and have a good race.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris was pleased to \u201cget back to the top\u201d by claiming pole position in Qualifying for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-25470","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}