Lando Norris says he has “no excuse” for his poor performance in sprint qualifying at Formula 1’s Singapore Grand Prix.
After taking seventh in SQ1, 0.020s ahead of McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri, and third in SQ2, 0.534s faster than the Australian, Norris ended up fifth in the top-10 shootout. He was outpaced by Piastri by 0.133s in that final phase.
“I just don’t think I put together a very good lap,” the Briton admitted. “That was all, no excuse.”
After being hit by fuel injection issues in Baku and Malaysia, which hindered the MCL40’s top speed, McLaren introduced a fix at Marina Bay.
Asked if he was satisfied with that solution, Norris said: “I think so, from what I’ve seen so far. I don’t know everything just yet, to be honest. The guys are still looking into it and it’s been a busy day.
“A lot of things seem good. We seem closer as a team. Just simply, I didn’t do a good enough job.”
Oscar Piastri, McLaren
Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images
Meanwhile, Piastri outqualified his team-mate for a third time in the latest five sessions – including Baku, where Norris especially suffered from the fuel injection problem – after enduring an 8-0 beating from Barcelona to Zandvoort.
“Pretty happy there,” Piastri said, having taken fourth place in Singapore. “I think that was more or less what we could have done. You know, it’s very, very tricky on a sprint weekend to get all the lap time out of the car here.
“I felt like on the soft things came alive a lot more. I was struggling on the medium, and then once we put the soft on, I felt pretty happy. So, yeah, not a bad effort.”
The first section of the track was a focus for the McLaren racer. “I was struggling with a few things in the car through there,” he admitted. “It was a little bit better now.
“Just the general feeling of the car, you know, it’s not any different to what it normally is. You’ve got to really wring its neck to be quick. And once we added a bit more grip in with the soft, it was a bit better. But, yeah, still a challenge.”
