Norris Gets The Better Of Verstappen In Austin Qualifying

Lando Norris will start tomorrow’s United States Grand Prix from pole position. It is the McLaren driver’s seventh career pole, the sixth this season and the fourth from the last five Grands Prix. It is pole number 162 for the British team, its first at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas.

Norris’ best time of 1’32”330 was 2”393 quicker than last year’s pole and almost 1”3 better than the pre-event simulation times, confirming the improvement in outright performance at this track already seen yesterday. It is also likely the lap times could have been even quicker, thanks to the cooler temperatures towards the end of Q3, but George Russell’s crash meant that the other nine drivers in the final session were unable to complete their second runs.

Max Verstappen, winner of the Sprint earlier in the day, starts alongside Norris with a time of 1’32”361. The Dutchman proved his mastery of the Saturday race, this being his 11th win from the 16 Formula 1 Sprints that have been held so far. The second row is an all-Ferrari affair with Carlos Sainz third in 1’32”652 ahead of Charles Leclerc (1’32”740).

All the drivers used one set of Medium tyres for the Sprint race. Only five drivers – Esteban Ocon (Alpine), Oscar Piastri (McLaren), Alexander Albon (Williams), Yuki Tsunoda (Racing Bulls) and Guanyu Zhou (Sauber) – used a new set with the others all opting for a set used in Sprint Qualifying.

For qualifying, all drivers used the Soft, some of them starting off with a set they had previously used yesterday.

The Pirelli Pole Position Award was presented to Norris by Sweden’s Armand “Mondo” Duplantis, gold medal winner in the pole vault at the 2024 Paris Olympics and in Tokyo in 2020. Duplantis who has joint American-Swedish nationality is considered the greatest ever at this discipline in which he also holds the world record of 6.26 metres.

Lando Norris – Pole

“It was a beautiful lap. I wasn’t going to go much quicker than I did. You know when you do a lap and think, it’s going to be tough to beat that. I put everything on the line, it’s what we needed to do. We’ve been on the back foot for much of the weekend. We’ve not had the pace of the Ferraris or the Red Bulls. So, I had to put in a special lap, and I did that. Overall, a cool lap and a nice place to start the race tomorrow.”

Max Verstappen – P2

“It was unfortunate not to be able to finish the final lap in Q3. During my first lap I made a mistake at turn 19 and on my second lap, we were purple in the first sector but unfortunately there was a yellow flag. This happens sometimes in racing and you can’t control these things. I was still really happy with our performance and we were really there to fight for pole which was very positive! We brought upgrades to the car this week which has made it faster and better to drive so hopefully this all works for tomorrow. We have been strong in the weekend so far and it was great to win the Sprint race. We learnt a lot from this and if we can replicate what we did in the Sprint I will be very confident for tomorrow. There are small gaps between teams so I expect that it will be very competitive and I need a good result tomorrow. The most important thing is that we are competitive again and the car is feeling better and hopefully we will be able to fight for the win tomorrow.”

Carlos Sainz – P3

“Overall it’s been a positive Saturday: we started out with a strong Sprint in which the car behaved very well and I was able to attack and move up three places.

“Then we switched to qualifying in which we knew after yesterday we had to work a lot on tyre preparation. The first attempt in Q3 was good and the second one was even better as I was improving my time and potentially could have finished a bit further up.

“In any case P3 gives us the chance to fight with the guys ahead for tomorrow. It will be a very interesting and tactical race and we are ready for it.”

Mario Isola – Pirelli Director of Motorsport

“A very interesting Saturday, although it was a shame that the thrilling climax to qualifying was never reached because of Russell’s crash. It would have been exciting to see how the fight for pole position would have gone, with at least four drivers seeming capable of securing it. The Sprint race was also very exciting with many duels and with the outcome being uncertain right to the end.

For us and of course for the teams, the 19 laps of the Sprint were a great opportunity to see the Medium at work over a long run, given that it will be the most popular choice for tomorrow’s race. Few drivers held back, so we were able to collect some interesting, but not surprising, data.”

On a track where the total pit stop time is not very long (20”5), a two-stop is clearly the quickest strategy and with nine of the ten teams having already used one set of Hards in the only free practice session yesterday, it’s clear the most likely option involves the use of two sets of the C3 and the remaining one C2. As to how their use will be split between the stints, honestly, we expect that everyone will try and start the race on the Medium. So, to sum up, the quickest strategy, based on a preliminary analysis, is a first stint on the C3, with a pit stop between laps 16 and 22 to switch to the C2, with a second stop between laps 35 and 41 to finish back on the C3. Those who want to run their final stint with the C2 could pit for the first time between laps 11 and 20 and a second time between laps 32 and 38. Finally, a third but unlikely route would be to use all three compounds: start on the C4 (first stop between laps 10 and 14), switch to the C2 (second stop between 34 and 40) and finish with the C3.”