Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris both blamed themselves for returning McLaren’s worst qualifying result of the season at the team’s first chance to clinch the constructors championship.
Piastri crashed out of Q3 for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix at Turn 3 without having set a time, leaving him ninth on the grid. Shortly afterwards Norris slapped the exit barrier at Turn 15, and though he was able to continue, the incident cost him enough time to leave him a scarcely better seventh and 1.122 seconds behind pole-getter Max Verstappen.
McLaren needs to outscore Ferrari by nine points and prevent Mercedes from outscoring it by 12 points or more to secure the championship. Even with Charles Leclerc crashing out of qualifying in 10th and Lewis Hamilton eliminated in 12th, McLaren would fail to clinch the title if the finishing positions reflect the starting grid.
The uncharacteristic fumble means there will be no McLaren on the front two rows for the first time this season.
Piastri, who hadn’t qualified lower than fourth this year before this weekend, took responsibility for his crash.
“I’m never one to blame it on something other than myself, and that’s what I’m going to stick with until I see something that tells me otherwise,” he said, though he admitted he wasn’t sure what error he committed after overnight changes to his car left him feeling much more comfortable than he had on Friday.
“Today I felt much happier with the car and the job I was doing,” he said. “It was just a bit difficult to get it all together. That was the biggest thing. But the potential was there, whereas yesterday it was arguable if it was.
“Ultimately I just tried a bit too hard in Turn 3. I haven’t actually looked at what I did differently, because I didn’t feel like I did that much differently, but a tiny bit can make a massive difference. I’m obviously disappointed with how I performed,”
Piastri’s crash left the goal wide open for Norris to score pole or an otherwise loftier grid slot to inflict maximum damage on his title rival’s championship lead, but he failed to capitalize and will instead start just two places ahead of the sister car. Trailing by 31 points after his engine-related retirement two rounds ago in the Netherlands, Norris refused to consider this a missed opportunity.
“No, because I still did everything I could,” he insisted.
But he too admitted to mistakes, in his case by arguing to leave pit lane first in the queue for the final laps in a bid to avoid any yellow or red flags that ultimately never materialized.
“It was just the wrong decision to make in the end,” he admitted. “If everyone else got a yellow behind because someone else went off behind me, you wouldn’t be asking me this question. Sometimes it goes your way around here, sometimes it doesn’t.
“Today I struggled more because of not making the best decision. But that’s a hindsight thing, not an incorrect one at the time.”
Despite having started the weekend as favorite to win the grand prix, Norris’s optimism for McLaren’s Sunday recovery was limited after the team’s disrupted Friday running and lowly starting positions.
“I think we won’t have the pace to beat Max,” he said. “I think he’s just going to be fast. He’s been quick all weekend. If they can easily win in Monza, they can easily win again here this weekend.
“I’ve not done any high-fuel running. I’ve not done many laps this weekend in general. I’ve got a lot of questions I still need to answer. I’ve got a lot of work I’ve got to do tonight to look into Oscar’s long-run stuff, see how the car is handling, what the issues are going to be and many things. I think I’ve got a long night ahead of me. But the pace is always there or thereabouts, so it’s just eyes forward and I’ll try to overtake as many as I can.”
But with Ferrari likely to be in the mix for the same points as McLaren, Norris added any thought of sealing the title remained far from the mind of his team.
“I don’t think we’re thinking about that at all at the minute,” he said. “We’re just trying to get the best out of both cars, and obviously today’s not been the best day for that. Tomorrow’s a new day, and we’ll get the best result we can.”