Lando Norris makes another mistake in qualifying: “Difficult car to drive? Yes, I’ve said it quite a few times!”. Lando Norris could not go beyond third place in Chinese GP qualifying. .

It was not a brilliant Saturday for the McLaren driver, who, after finishing eighth in the Sprint race, continued to struggle to extract the full potential of his MCL39. Lando Norris finished qualifying in third place, behind teammate Oscar Piastri and George Russell, without completing his final attempt.

After struggling in the morning, Lando Norris seemed more comfortable in the early stages of qualifying. He set the fastest time in Q1 with a 1:30.983 and improved to 1:30.787 in Q2, establishing a clear gap over the competition.

Things changed in Q3. On his first attempt, Lando Norris was slightly slower—by just six-thousandths—than his best Q2 time. His second attempt wasn’t better: after improving in the first sector, he lost pace in the middle sector and decided to return to the pits without completing the lap. While only Oscar Piastri had beaten his first lap, Russell managed to surpass him by 70 thousandths in the final Q3 runs, relegating Norris to third place and the second row.

Lando Norris and His Mistakes: Driver or Car?
In the interview with the top three finishers immediately after the session, the Australian GP winner first congratulated his teammate on securing his maiden pole before analyzing his own performance.

“I’m always disappointed when I’m not on pole, but Oscar deserves it today. He did a great job all weekend, so I’m happy for him—his first pole in Formula 1, which is always nice. Yes, some mistakes again… that’s kind of been the theme of my weekend. But the car was a bit better today. I feel much more comfortable with it; it’s a step in the right direction, especially compared to yesterday when I struggled a lot, as well as this morning. We’re moving in a much better direction—not too disappointed, really,” said Norris.

Jolyon Palmer, conducting the interview, pressed Lando Norris on the mistakes he mentioned, asking if it was difficult to extract the full potential from the McLaren. “Well, yes, I’ve said it quite a few times [that the car is really difficult to drive at the moment]; it’s quite fast, and when we get it right, it’s the fastest car. Sometimes, it can be a bit wild. But today that wasn’t the case—today, it was just mistakes on my part, that’s all.”

“We made a lot of changes to the car because we were nowhere. We worked very hard to make some improvements for qualifying, and hopefully, they’ll pay off in the race tomorrow. We’ll see,” Lando Norris concluded.