Norris "felt like there were plenty of places" where he could have gone quicker
Having made a slight mistake on his last flying lap in qualifying at the Qatar Grand Prix, McLaren driver Lando Norris indictaed that he "felt like there were plenty of places" where he could have gone quicker.
On the back of his brilliant performance in sprint qualifying, Oscar Piastri led from pole for the Sprint and was never troubled as he recorded his first Sprint win of the season and third on the bounce in Qatar.
His team-mate Lando Norris started from third on the grid, and could not make any progress from there, but he still managed to limit the damage with a third-place finish.
The two Mclaren drivers slugged it out all the way to the last laps of Q3. Norris seemed to have the upper hand until the very last flying lap, but he made a slight mistake on his ultimate hot lap which forced him to abort his effort. By contrast, Piastri put in a sensational effort to steal pole back for the penultimate race of the season.
Asked where he lost out to Piastri, Norris added: "No idea. Don't care now. It's too late. Oscar did a very good job today, has done the whole weekend. I certainly felt a bit more comfortable in the car today, that I could push it a bit more in the way I wanted.
"So, I felt better. I felt like I did a good first lap. I felt like there were plenty of places I thought I could go quicker. I think Turn 2 wasn't necessarily one of them, but it was one where I just caught a bit of understeer for some reason, and that was it.
"So yeah, frustrating because I certainly think I could have done a better job and improved on my lap a good amount — but I didn’t. So, second on the grid for us tomorrow.
After his issues on the opening day of the Qatar Grand Prix, Norris said that he "felt a lot better" behind the wheel of his McLaren thanks to some tweaks to the set-up.
"A lot, yeah. Obviously, it's not made me do much better, but I still felt a lot better. I felt like I could at least challenge for pole today. I also had a lot of damage on the car at the end of Q3 yesterday, so I think that certainly helps as well.
"But yeah, it's second. Obviously, like Oscar said, long run down to Turn 1 is a good opportunity for anyone to gain or lose positions. Apart from that, I think it's going to be a pretty boring and straightforward race.
