McLaren ‘easily good enough for front row’ in Bahrain says disappointed Norris

Lando Norris believes he threw away a potential front row start for the Bahrain Grand Prix after a mistake on his final lap in Q3.

The McLaren driver will line up seventh on the grid for the opening race of the season, one place ahead of team mate Oscar Piastri on the fourth row.
It is McLaren’s best qualifying performance in Bahrain in three years following back-to-back poor starts to the season in 2022 and 2023. Despite being less than half a second away from Max Verstappen’s pole time and ahead of Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes, Norris admitted he failed to extract the maximum from his car.

“I messed up sector one,” Norris explained. “I just had a little oversteer on the exit of turn one, just as I came on the throttle, and it cost me easily one-and-a-half tenths. And one-and-a-half tenths today was P2. So it’s frustrating.”

After sensing he had lost time through the opening corners, Norris says he tried to gain back the time lost, which caused him to make more errors.

“I felt like I wanted to push a bit more,” he said. “Wrong thing to do.

“I paid the price again in turn four and made another couple mistakes. The rest of the lap was there or thereabouts. But honestly the car was easily good enough for a front row.”

Despite feeling like he left time on the track, Norris was encouraged by how the new MCL38 has evolved positively over the weekend so far.

“I’m disappointed, therefore, I didn’t deliver for it, but the team’s done a great job,” Norris said. “The car’s feeling amazing. So I’m happy with that.

“Things have come together very well over the weekend. I just didn’t deliver, so. A bit of a shame, but I’ll try to make up for it tomorrow.”

It’s close, very close. I think we’re in the mix roughly but it seems it’s very tight between everyone… I don’t think Red Bull is quite as quick as everyone first feared, so hopefully that sets up an interesting year. We are certainly a bit happier than we were 12 months ago here. A bit of a tricky session but we’ll see what we can do.”

Both McLaren drivers will be looking to make their way up the order in Saturday night’s Bahrain Grand Prix, with cars from Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and Aston Martin all starting ahead.