Lando Norris has explained where his Sprint Qualifying session was compromised, as he slipped to sixth in the crucial SQ3 after mistakes on his flying laps.

With McLaren coming into Sprint Qualifying as the favourites to take the top spot, it was Ferrari and Red Bull who claimed the front row as McLaren didn’t deliver on their potential in SQ3.

Lando Norris explains Sprint Qualifying struggles at Chinese Grand Prix

Norris was imperious in the first practice session on Friday before the cars went into parc fermé conditions at the start of Sprint Qualifying.

Norris also finished with the fastest medium tyre compound lap time from the first two portions of Sprint Qualifying, setting a 1:31.174 on his best flying lap in SQ2.

All the indications were that the battle for the top spot in SQ3 would involve the two McLarens but, when it mattered, it was Ferrari and Red Bull who came out on top as both Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen eclipsed the long-standing circuit lap record to dip into the 1:30s.

Oscar Piastri came close, finishing third and less than a tenth behind Hamilton’s time, but Norris didn’t fare quite as well as he struggled with the handling of the MCL39 during the session.

His first run saw him fighting a loose rear through Turn 13, which hampered his exit speed onto the long back straight and resulted in him setting a time of 1:31.3. On his second run, any chance he had of improving was stymied by braking too late into the hairpin and running wide.

He aborted the lap, diving back into the pits as he was resigned to his sixth-place grid slot for the Sprint race.

“I made a mistake. I locked up in the last corner,” Norris said afterward.

“But we just struggled a bit more now, just not quick enough. Simply struggled a lot with the car.

“Just our difficulties that we’ve been struggling with showed a lot more today, so nothing more than that, honestly, just too many mistakes, but just too difficult of a car to drive.”

While the inherent pace of the car appears very strong, if not the class of the pack, accessing the performance was a step too far for Norris in Sprint Qualifying, which he said was much more in keeping with what he encountered during the three-day pre-season test in Bahrain.

“I think just throughout the day, we’ve been struggling a bit with the front locking and struggling a lot in the last corner with all the tailwinds,” he said.

“So kind of a lot more in line with Bahrain, just a lot windier – when the wind’s blowing, then we struggle a lot more.

“Both myself and Oscar struggled more – clearly, me more than him. So yeah, just pushing a bit hard to try and make up for not quite being quick enough.

“I can’t make the car perfect, but this was me just trying to, again, just push a bit too much. So I just need to back off a little bit and not try pushing [as] much. I think the car’s still good and in a good window, maybe not good enough for the pole, but we can definitely go forward.”

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Norris explained on Thursday how he believes the McLaren doesn’t quite fit with his driving style, and weighed in on the possibility that the MCL39 may prove a ‘peakier’ car this year, and more difficult to get into the right operating window.

“I think the thing is, the aero guys and girls back in the factory – they just try to find lap time,” he said.

“You’ve got to balance how you work the car. Like certain other teams have said, at times you can try to find a more peaky aero balance. If it works at the peak, it’s better, but it might be trickier to drive and worse in windy conditions.

“Or do you try to get rid of some of that peak grip and make it a slightly more all-rounded car? You have to play with this balance, because it’s difficult to get both. You have to choose what direction you want to go in. And definitely, I think some of what I want from a car is first of all just very hard to get. That’s probably the best answer.

“For me, a good front at apex, that’s kind of all I feel like I want. But I very rarely have what I need from that perspective. But the car can still win races. It’s not like if I don’t have what I want, the car is bad. I can still get the most out of the car if I don’t have what I want. There are just compromises.

“It’s so complicated when the guys and the girls try to take you through… If I do want more front end at mid-corner, at the minute we can only get that if we compromise low-speed or high-speed performance, or making the car more sensitive to windy conditions.

“There are so many compromises you have to make and at the end of the day, you just want the best all-rounded car. I think that’s the main answer to it all. I think I’ve got a better understanding of that over the past couple of years on driving styles, how I need to drive the car. Maybe making a bit of that switch from ‘I want this from the car, and I want to keep driving my way until you make it more suited me.’

“I guess I’ve kind of thrown that away and just said, ‘Alright, give me the best car, and I need to adapt a lot more to the car I get given.’ It’s not the most comfortable, and it’s not what I like the most, it’s not what I can get the most out of but over the last year and a half, I’ve probably learned more about my driving than I did in the previous five years, just because the car has changed, and I’ve fallen into this philosophy of give me the best car and I’ll adapt to that rather than give me the car I want.”

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