Lando Norris says he wasn’t sure how good his pole position lap was at the Mexico City Grand Prix until he saw his final time, but that his feeling with the McLaren came together at the right moment.
McLaren hasn’t had a pole position since Oscar Piastri at Zandvoort, while Norris himself last started on pole before the summer break at Spa-Francorchamps, but he pulled out an excellent final lap at the end of Q3. Posting a 1m15.586s, Norris says the time was quicker than he expected, as he beat provisional polesitter Charles Leclerc by over a quarter of a second.
“That’s the confusing thing… I mean, obviously it was an incredible lap,” Norris said. “I pushed the braking everywhere, I pushed the high speed a bit more and all those things, but I don’t have a delta, so I didn’t know if I was up, if I was down, if it was good, bad, whatever.
“There were a couple of little places where I thought I messed up a touch and didn’t get the best exits, like out of [Turn] 6, but the rest of it felt pretty decent. I was happy, but I thought I’d be more like a 15.9s, 15.8s. I thought if I’d get ahead of Charles, I’d be pretty happy.
“So when I saw 15.5s on my dash, it put a pretty big smile on my face because it was one of those laps which was – everything just came together in terms of feeling. It was very natural and similar to my lap in Monaco. A good feeling because it’s been a while. It’s not that often this year I get that feeling in this car, even with how quick it is, but I’m happy because of this.”
Not only was the lap significant in giving Norris pole position, it also sees him start two rows ahead of Max Verstappen in fifth and teammate Oscar Piastri in seventh, a margin he admits is slightly surprising.
“It’s tough because I do feel like I’m doing a very good job,” he said. “I feel like I have been for a good amount of weekends now, especially when I get this feeling that I had today. Actually, the whole day today – it’s not just my Q3 lap that was good. FP3 was strong already and a good step better than it was yesterday.
“Q1, Q2, Q3 – all of my laps were good – no mistakes, no lock-ups, none of these things. I could just improve in a good way. The car is incredibly quick, but it’s not easy to drive. I think we both complained of that as drivers, but when you just get in that little bit of a rhythm, it’s flying, and that’s where I was today.”