Max Verstappen “always ruins everything for everyone,” according to a joking Lando Norris after seeing the Dutchman beat him to pole position at the British Grand Prix.
Norris had set the fastest time on the final runs in Q3 and then saw a number of drivers fail to beat him as the home crowd at Silverstone started to believe they might see a British driver take a shock pole position. While Verstappen wasn’t setting the timing screens alight he was still finding time and, as the last car across the line, took pole by just over 0.2s to leave Norris starting second.
“I was close!” Norris said. “I was P1 in Q1, P1 in Q2 (sic) I think and close – two-tenths – to P1 in Q3. So, pretty insane. My last lap was a good lap. I could hear Zak (Brown) on the radio on the in-lap, which is the best thing ever. I’m grateful. For us to the second and third was pretty amazing for the whole team.
“It’s always Max — he always ruins everything for everyone!”
Norris says the result makes up for McLaren’s tough start to the season that has appeared to turn around since a major update was introduced in Austria last time out, but he was still surprised to see so many other teams fail to beat his time before Verstappen’s last lap.
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“I was watching… There are a lot of TV screens around the circuit so I was trying to watch every single one possible and I was surprised how long I was up at the top for but it just kind of depended on when Max was going to cross the line.
“I guess I’m a little bit surprised. I wasn’t expecting for us to be here or for myself to be here anyway. I think we’re very happy with the result. But it was more if Max made a mistake rather than if we were quicker than him. He’s doing a very good job. The team are doing a very good job from his side.”
With Verstappen the heavy favorite to win Sunday’s race, Norris last started in the top three in Barcelona but faded to finish a lap down and out of the points after first lap contact with Lewis Hamilton, and he says he’s far more optimistic of converting his starting position on this occasion.
“We don’t talk about Barcelona anymore, OK! I think if we look to Austria, Austria is a very different circuit to this. But in Austria we performed extremely well in qualifying and we managed to back it up a reasonable amount in the race. So I want to be hopeful.
“I’m not normally hopeful going into a Sunday, because of how this year has been and how things normally go or certain tracks come Sunday. But I’ve got some reasons to believe and some hope after our pace today, and how we were on Friday and some (of the) times, then we can have a good race tomorrow. Probably not enough to race (Verstappen), but enough to put up a fight for, hopefully, a top five.”