Lando Norris doubts he will be able to salvage a strong result in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix after crashing in qualifying.
The McLaren driver suffered a heavy impact with the wall when he ran wide at turn four and lost control of his car on a kerb. He was taken to the Medical Centre as a precaution afterwards, but has not suffered any injuries.
“I’m just disappointed with today,” Norris said after qualifying 10th for the race. “I know I have to look forward to tomorrow and I’ll go now and see my engineers and we’ll look ahead to what we can do tomorrow. We know the car is good, we know the car’s quick.”
His team mate Oscar Piastri was beaten to pole position by Max Verstappen, the pair separated by a hundredth of a second. George Russell was only a tenth of a second behind in third place.
With the gaps between the front-runners so small and passing so challenging at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, Norris does not believe he will be able to challenge for a podium finish.
“I’ll go and see my engineers and apologise and then see what we can do for tomorrow, try and put a good plan in place,” he told Sky. “But tomorrow we’re going to need a bit of luck.
“It’s so difficult, it’s almost impossible to overtake around here, so I’m not expecting anything magical.
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“But we have a good car. If we can work our way up to the top five or six, I would be happy.
“Oscar wasn’t on pole, our pace was clearly not that much better than Max. Even George is not that far away, so I think to get close to them is not very realistic, but to try to get to the top five is probably our target.”
Norris’s crash puts his championship lead in peril. He goes into tomorrow’s race three points ahead of Piastri at the top of the standings and eight points ahead of Verstappen.
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