After Leclerc’s stunning surge that broke the track record, Norris replied by stealing pole from the Ferrari driver by a tenth: McLaren approached qualifying by prioritizing driver-track feeling over pure performance. Piastri ended up third due to a mistake in the second sector.
On the most important day, in the most important moment, Lando Norris pulled off a move that could prove to be a turning point. Just over two months have passed since the great Australian weekend (pole and win) — a perfect start to the season for someone whose only goal is the championship. But the six race weekends that followed told a different story, showing a Norris prone to mistakes and struggling with the car, especially when pushing it to the limit. Or simply less performant than his difficult teammate, Oscar Piastri, who after Melbourne racked up four wins and three pole positions.
Monaco is obviously a matter of tenths or less, and those who complain pretend not to know it. In the key moments, today’s qualifying in Monte Carlo wasn’t affected by external events (no red flags interrupted Q3); it was all about speed on track — and that’s where Norris, somewhat surprisingly, stepped up. Lando started with the second-best time in Q1 and topped Q2, but the field remained wide open, with a tight fight for pole among the two papaya cars, Charles Leclerc, and Max Verstappen.
McLaren played a likely decisive card in the pole fight, choosing in Q3 to send out both cars early with the final set of softs. The strategy (planned before qualifying) prioritized the driver’s track feeling over the usual arithmetic approach, with both Norris and Piastri leaving the pits with five minutes to go and enough fuel to complete two flying laps.
On traditional circuits, this strategy is ruled out from the start due to the added fuel weight, but in Monaco fuel consumption per lap doesn’t exceed 1.2 kg, and tire degradation on a second lap is minimal. The advantage is that in the final lap the driver can push more, shave off a few centimeters — which make the difference on the stopwatch.
In the first flying lap, both Norris and Piastri clocked times that already seemed good enough for an all-papaya front row (1’10”125 for Lando, 1’10”140 for Oscar), then Leclerc launched his fast lap.
Charles impressed, shaving half a second off his previous time on softs and completing the lap in 1’10”063. After the roar of the Monegasque crowd, all attention turned to Norris’ second and final lap.
Up until two corners from the end, pole was still in Leclerc’s hands, then came the strike — with a breathtaking third sector that allowed Lando to dip below the 1:10 mark: 1’09”954. Zak Brown’s shout was liberating: on one hand, it meant avoiding the bitter disappointment of a near miss; on the other, it marked the return of the Norris that had been missing for a while.
“In Monaco, you always want to do as many laps as possible,” Lando commented. “We were convinced it wouldn’t be easy to extract everything on the first try, we had seen in every free practice session that the fastest times came after a sequence of laps. We decided to go for two flying laps with the final set of softs and stuck to the plan. It was what we believed was the right thing to do, and clearly, it was the right choice.”
Piastri also improved his time on the second attempt, but only by eleven thousandths due to a mistake in the second sector. The full front row was missed, but McLaren’s progress was significant — and above all, it lays a strong foundation for a possible win in tomorrow’s race.
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