In Saudi Arabia, McLaren seemed unbeatable, but an incident took Lando Norris out of the game during qualifying. The British driver, in the early minutes of Q3, forced the marshals to wave the red flags after hitting the wall. Let’s take a look at what happened and why this is a big gift for Piastri.
Oscar Piastri was the only driver to set a lap time in Q3 before it was interrupted. The Australian posted a lap time of 1:27.560, but it’s a time that could still be improved considering the mistake he made in turn 4.
In the same corner where Oscar made his mistake earlier, Lando Norris made a significant error shortly after. In turn 4, the British driver didn’t hit the innermost part of the corner. This forced him to use too much of the curb when changing direction between turns 4 and 5. It was at this point that he lost control of the car and crashed into the wall at the exit of turn 5 (link to the video).
This is a big gift for Oscar Piastri from the Dutchman, who now needs to take advantage of this opportunity to collect as many points as possible and put pressure on Lando Norris in the drivers’ championship. The Australian will start from second position, alongside Max Verstappen, who managed to steal the pole position from McLaren again, getting ahead by just 10 thousandths.
Lando Norris, on the other hand, will start from 10th position, behind Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda. Will he be able to recover? Is a victory a realistic goal for the race? Stay tuned for all the updates.
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