Lando Norris admitted he was disappointed to narrowly miss out on pole position for the Dutch Grand Prix after his strong showing in practice.
The McLaren driver led all three practice sessions but lost out in a close fight for pole position with his team mate. Oscar Piastri led a McLaren one-two in qualifying by 12 thousandths of a second.
“It’s close,” said Norris, “it’s been close the whole weekend, so easily it could go one way or the other.
“So I guess I’m a little bit disappointed I’m not on pole. But it’s close, we still had some decent laps, so it’s not the end of the world either.”
Norris said variable wind conditions at Zandvoort worked against him as the pair set their flying lap times within hundredths of a second of each other in Q3.
“With the wind like this, a lot of it’s down to luck as well – even with all the luck I’ve been having,” said Norris. “So it’s tough.
“I had a good lap [in] Q3 run one, but just a small headwind down the straight, and I lost like one hundredth. So you could easily say it’s there.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
“But I’m in a good position. We’re in a really good fight. Oscar’s been driving well all weekend – we’ve been driving well all season, so we’ll have some fun tomorrow.”
Piastri admitted he had been lacking a little pace compared to Norris until qualifying. “That was the definition of peaking at the right time,” he said.
“The whole weekend I felt pretty good, but there’s just been a couple of corners that I’ve not been able to go any faster. And I didn’t really go any faster in those corners, but I found some more elsewhere.
“So I’m super-happy to come out with a result. Obviously we’ve still got all the points [to score] tomorrow, but it was looking like a little bit of a tricky weekend so far. So to come out with that, I’m pretty stoked.”
Miss nothing from RaceFans
Get a daily email with all our latest stories – and nothing else. No marketing, no ads. Sign up here:
