Championship leader Lando Norris will have a great opportunity to extend his gap on teammate Oscar Piastri in tomorrow’s F1 São Paulo GP by starting from the top spot.
After comfortably leading the way in the Sprint Race, Norris commanding set the fastest time in all three Qualifying segments at the Brazilian track, with a final 1:09.511. Nevertheless, the Brit didn’t feel like his performance was as dominating as perceived.
Not as confident
In fact, Norris admits that Q3 for the F1 São Paulo GP hadn’t been a breeze as while on his first attempt he had locked up, consequently only having one chance to secure P1.
“It was for sure more stressful than I would have liked, especially because we’ve been very quick all weekend. Just didn’t need that. I don’t really know how it happened. I looked at the data after, quickly, between the two runs, and I braked earlier with less pressure, and still somehow locked up.
“So yeah, a bit weird. Maybe a bit of wind or something. But that certainly put a little bit more pressure on my final lap, and I saw the others improving — but not a lot. It was just difficult again, just with the track conditions, the wind, everything — hard to get a nice feeling out there.”
The final, decisive lap would ultimately turn out to be his best performance of the weekend so far, however the McLaren driver didn’t know that, or his own actual performance, at the time.
“So again, I didn’t know if I was up or down on my delta, so I was a bit stressed. But when I went over the line and saw the lap, I was pretty happy. And when I saw no one running quicker, even happier.”
The importance of small factors
In spite of having a strong 0.174s advantage over second placed driver Kimi Antonelli, the papaya talent expressed the importance of tiny margins and gains at Interlagos, especially focusing on what could have prevented him from achieving pole had it gone wrong.
“You never know around here. My Turn 1 wasn’t amazing. I think Kimi was purple in Sector 1 by a thousandth, so maybe a thousandth more there. There were little bits, but it’s so difficult with the wind.
“Every lap, it changes — three kilometres per hour, four kilometres per hour, you don’t really notice it probably when you’re standing there, but it can easily make you go a tenth quicker in a corner or half a tenth here and there, and that can be a lot at the end of the day.”
The weather has been playing a huge role in this Brazilian weekend so fa, with three drivers, including his teammate Piastri, spinning out on Lap 3 of the Sprint Race by running over the damp kerbs at Turn 3. Norris focused instead on another climatic phenomenon impacting the F1 São Paulo GP.
“That can be positions, it can be pole and not pole, those kinds of things. So, difficult. And sometimes you do the same thing — you repeat, like my Turn 1 — but you just make a mistake for no apparent reason, no obvious reason why, in the car. So yeah, difficult as it was for everyone today, but definitely not a perfect lap — but good enough.”
What about tomorrow?
Asked about strategy for the upcoming race, the Brit admitted he still hasn’t worked out anything.
“We’ll have to wait and see. That’s what tonight’s for, honestly. I don’t look too much into strategy until Saturday night. So, we’ll see. I think everyone has the same in common. The Soft certainly doesn’t feel like a Medium-to-Soft step.”
In spite of Pirelli carrying harder tyres compared to the previous year, Norris can still find several differences in tyre behaviour comparing to last year’s F1 São Paulo GP.
“The Soft certainly doesn’t handle like what the Medium did last year. So it’s interesting. There are still some differences, and again, conditions can change everything. So we’ll just do, as always, our work tonight and prepare the best way possible.”
