In qualifying for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, a Lando Norris crash brought out a red flag just moments after McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri set the first fast lap of the session.
Piastri will line up second on the grid for Sunday’s race, while Norris will have to content himself with a 10th-place start.
Lando Norris crash prompts Piastri red flag quip
In the final stage of qualifying, Lando Norris brought out a red flag after brushing the barrier and crashing hard at the Jeddah Corniche circuit.
It’ll see Norris start from 10th on the grid for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix unless any repairs require a pit-lane start — but McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri will be starting up on the front row.
In fact, Piastri had just crossed the line to set his first fast lap of the season when Norris brought out the red, making him the only driver to do so.
When asked in the post-qualifying press conference if the flag destabilized him, Piastri quipped, “I mean, it was alright for me — I was the only one with a lap on the board!”
“I knew that probably that lap wasn’t going to be enough anyway, so I knew that I would have to go back out and improve,” he continued.
“It’s a little bit nicer when you have a lap already on the board.
“But again, when you know you have to go out there and do a better job, then it kind of renders that one somewhat useless.”
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The unbothered Piastri noted that when the session went green again, he knew he’d have a tough uphill battle ahead of him.
“I saw that Max was a thousandth faster after that before I went back out, so I knew that I had to improve to get back on pole,” Piastri explained.
Regarding his flying lap, the Aussie driver said, “At the time I felt like it was a good lap, yes.
“I made a bit of a mistake on the first lap and managed to get through that corner much better on the second attempt.
“When you need one hundredth, you can think of a few places — but honest, it was a good lap that I was happy with. I think Max did a very good job today, and that was pretty much all we had.”
The driver was then asked if he felt like he’d have a better shot of passing Verstappen in Jeddah than at a track like Suzuka, to which Piastri responded with another quip.
“I’ll see. I’ll see how I feel,” he laughed.
“I think we’ve got good pace.
“I think the Red Bull and Max look more competitive here than they did certainly last week, and Suzuka is not a completely different layout to somewhere like here, with a lot of high-speed corners, so it kind of makes sense to me at least that they’re a bit more competitive.
“We’ll see if that translates to the race tomorrow, but I’m feeling confident in what we’ve got. There’s a lot of DRS zones around here, which is a nice different to Suzuka. So, let’s see if we can make some progress.”
Piastri will line up second alongside polesitter Max Verstappen for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, and both drivers will be hoping to win the drag race into Turn 1.
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