Lando Norris says he didn’t realize how good his pole position lap at the Mexico City Grand Prix was until he saw his final times, but his senses with McLaren aligned at the right moment.
McLaren hasn’t taken pole position since Oscar Piastri at Zandvoort, and Norris himself last took pole position at Spa-Francorchamps before the summer break, but he set an impressive final lap late in Q3. Norris, who recorded a time of 1 minute 15.586 seconds, beat provisional pole sitter Charles Leclerc by more than a quarter of a second and said his time was faster than expected.
“That’s what made it confusing…I mean, it was obviously an unbelievable lap,” Norris said. “I braked all over the place, pushed a little more high speed, and all that stuff, but there was no delta, so I didn’t know if it was going up or down, good or bad, or anything else.
“There were a few little places where I thought I missed the touch and I didn’t have the best exit, like the exit of (Turn) 6, but other than that I was pretty good. I was happy with it, but I was thinking it would be more like 15.9 seconds or 15.8 seconds. I thought if I could get ahead of Charles, I’d be pretty happy.”
“So when I saw that I got 15.5 seconds on the dash, I had a big smile on my face because it was one of those laps, where everything came together in terms of feel. It was very natural, similar to the lap in Monaco. It’s been a while so it’s a good feeling. No matter how fast I was, I don’t really get that feeling in this car this year, but I’m happy for that.”
He admits the margin is a bit surprising, not only because this lap was important in giving Norris pole position, but also because Norris started from seventh, five rows ahead of Max Verstappen and two rows ahead of teammate Oscar Piastri.
“It’s tough because I feel like I’m doing a really good job,” he said. “I feel like I’ve had quite a weekend, especially when I felt like it today. Actually all day today, it wasn’t just the laps in Q3 that were good. FP3 was already strong and it was a lot better than yesterday.”
“Q1, Q2, Q3 – all my laps were good – no mistakes, no lock-ups, nothing. I was able to improve in a good way. The car is incredibly fast, but it’s not easy to drive. I think we were frustrated about it as drivers, but you just get into a bit of a rhythm and it’s flying, and that was me today.”
