Norris happy to ‘get back to the top’ with pole in Belgium as Piastri rues ‘disappointing’ P2 result

Lando Norris was pleased to “get back to the top” by claiming pole position in Qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix, while McLaren team mate Oscar Piastri was left disappointed to miss out on P1, having felt that there “was more in it”.

With Norris going quickest in Q1 and Piastri setting the pace in Q2, it was Norris who went quickest during the opening laps of Q3 on a lap of 1m 40.562s – a time that remained fastest across the final runs.

While the Briton was “not the happiest” with his third place in Friday’s Sprint Qualifying, he insisted that he had never been concerned about the remainder of the weekend after reflecting on his result in Saturday’s Qualifying session.

“It was a decent lap,” said Norris. “I’m happy. I don’t know why everyone was pretty worried after yesterday. I wasn’t even that far off. It was just a couple of little issues that we had.

“I was confident after yesterday and coming into today, so it’s nice to see that I could get back to the top.”

Pushed on where the improvement had come from, the 25-year-old responded: “Three-tenths is just slipstream and not being first out of the pit lane. It’s nothing to worry about. People like to make a lot of things up, but I’ve felt good. The car has been flying all weekend.

“Oscar has been doing a good job all weekend, so we’re pushing each other a lot, like he said. It’s tough, because you see where your strengths and weaknesses are easily and you learn from each other quickly, so it’s a good but tough battle that we have at the minute.”

While the track action during Friday and Saturday has taken place in dry conditions, the possibility of rain remains for Sunday. Norris, however, is hoping that the weather will stay as it has been for race day.

“I’d prefer it to stay dry, honestly, even for the fans,” the eight-time race winner reflected. “It’s rained here for the last 10 years or so, so it would be nice to have a dry Sunday. But I don’t mind whether it’s dry or rain or somewhere in the middle. It’s normal here and I look forward to a fun race.”

On the other side of the McLaren garage, Piastri improved on his final effort but was unable to better Norris’ lap, the Australian ending Qualifying 0.085s adrift.

When quizzed afterwards if he was content or disappointed with his P2 result, Piastri answered: “[It’s] a bit disappointing. The second lap was coming together really well and I just made a little mistake into [Turn] 14 and lost a lot of time so, yeah, I’m disappointed.

“It felt like the car was good again and it’s fine margins out there. Obviously it’s not a bad place to be starting, but I think there was more in it, which is always disappointing.”

In terms of whether he had been left surprised by Norris’ improvement over the weekend – or if he felt that the Briton was learning from his own data – Piastri reflected: “I don’t know. I think we’re a good team mate pairing and we learn a lot from each other every weekend.

“That’s what makes us such a good team, but it also makes it difficult when you’re trying to fight each other. I did an okay job today, just didn’t quite execute when it mattered, and it’s a bit of a shame.”

Following his second place result in the Sprint – after starting from pole position before losing out to Max Verstappen on the first lap – Piastri joked: “After the Sprint, I was aiming for P2!

“I don’t know what the weather is going to hold tomorrow, I think it’s going to be quite different. We’ll wait and see what we get but try and have a good race.”