LAS VEGAS — Lando Norris admitted he had written off his chances of taking pole at the Las Vegas Grand Prix after waking from a pre-qualifying nap to find torrential rain soaking the Strip.
The championship leader then went out and beat Max Verstappen by a comfortable 0.323 seconds with a flawless final flyer in Q3, while his title rival and McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri could only manage fifth.
Norris had spent the build-up tempering expectations on a circuit he believed would expose McLaren’s weaknesses, so the result caught even him by surprise.
“I was having a little snooze before qualifying, fully expecting it to stay dry,” he laughed afterward. “I opened my eyes, looked outside and it was absolutely pouring. My first thought was ‘oh no, this is going to be a disaster.’ Nobody had ever driven this track in the wet, so I had zero idea what to expect.”
He continued: “I basically proved myself wrong. All week I’d been saying we probably wouldn’t be very competitive here. Even in Wednesday’s press conference my expectations were low. Then we looked decent yesterday and this morning in practice, so I started thinking that in the dry we could actually fight for pole. Waking up to rain definitely wasn’t part of the plan — it just adds chaos, and I haven’t always been the most comfortable in these conditions this year. But from lap one in quali the car felt great and it all came together.”
Norris will start Saturday night’s race from the front, with Verstappen alongside and Carlos Sainz third in the Williams, but he refused to get carried away.
“I’ve barely strung four laps together all weekend, so I have no clue what race pace is going to look like or how the tires will hold up,” he said. “Hardly anyone has run the hard compound for any real distance. There are still a lot of unknowns — for everyone. The one-lap speed is definitely stronger than it was here last year, but Max and Carlos are both going to come out swinging. It’s going to be a long race, anything can happen, especially if it stays dry and turns into more of a straightforward fight. For now, though, I’m in the best seat possible and I’ll take it.”
