Lando Norris took the blame for missing out on a place on the front row of the grid at the Chinese Grand Prix, saying he made “too many mistakes” during qualifying.
Norris will line up third for Sunday’s grand prix after McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri took pole position ahead of Mercedes‘ George Russell in second.
Norris’ qualifying result on Saturday was an improvement on his sprint race performance, for which he qualified sixth and finished eighth, but he admitted to making small errors that left him 0.152 seconds off Piastri’s fastest time.
“It’s just tight and close, but it was a much better job than we did yesterday [in sprint qualifying] — and I did yesterday,” Norris said. “So the car was feeling much better and yeah, I was feeling definitely more comfortable.
“Still too many mistakes from my side. I’m not as comfortable as I was in Australia [when Norris won the opening round of the season].
“Just tricky, but it is for everyone, and I just haven’t done the best job — and Oscar has done a very good job.”
He added: “When you do that kind of good job, then it can easily be the quickest car. So a couple of things, and just more my driving — just that rhythm of knowing exactly what to do where, how much.
“Also, when you have the tyres and if you push a bit too much, the tyres can bite quite quickly too. So many different things, but also just Oscar’s done a good job and I’ve not done a perfect job. It’s tight, so I just paid the price for not doing well enough.”
Piastri finished second behind Lewis Hamilton in Saturday’s sprint race and Norris said he was hoping to unlock a similar level of performance as his teammate on Sunday.
“I think Oscar’s shown great pace. I definitely haven’t — especially from the race pace. And whenever we struggle with front graining, it’s something I just struggle with a lot personally.
“So yeah, difficult for me. It’s been therefore a difficult weekend, just trying to deal with those things. It’s something I’m not strong enough in. But yeah, I’ve got a long, long night ahead of me to sit down and go through the data and see what I can improve for tomorrow.”
Source: espn.com