Lando Norris “expected a bit more” despite Singapore F1 pole

Lando Norris says he “expected a bit more” from his McLaren F1 car despite taking pole position at the Singapore Grand Prix.

Norris was 0.203 seconds quicker than title rival Max Verstappen in a one-lap shootout for pole as the two championship protagonists locked out the front-row of the grid in qualifying.

But the Briton was not entirely satisfied with his lap, admitting it was “not particularly good”.

“Just because it’s difficult. It’s hard to do everything around here in one lap,” he explained.

“So I was a bit down in the first sector, probably a couple of tenths, and then I felt like I had to try and push a bit harder in the middle sector to make up for it and that kind of thing.

“But it still felt good. We’ve been good all weekend. Just struggled to progress much from practice into quali. We just found a good set-up there and stuck and didn’t really progress at all, really.

“I went only a touch quicker than what I did in FP3. So I expected a bit more and probably found it a bit more difficult than I would have liked in Q1, Q2 and Q3.

“But the car’s been amazing all weekend, so it felt good and felt comfortable just to go out and put the lap in.”

Norris added: “I think we’ve just done a very good job at arriving at the track and the car works well.

“I mean, we haven’t touched the car all weekend. Mainly because no matter what we do, it doesn’t really make much difference.

“We’ve kind of just had the car and not had to do a lot to it, but that’s also a good thing in many ways.

“But it was still a handful to drive in the end, like the Q3 lap at the end was tough with locking, with the bumps.

“I made quite a few mistakes, so the car was still tricky to drive, but very quick. And that just allows me to drive at 99% and still deliver, so just a combination of several things.”

Norris goes into Sunday’s race hoping to further eat into Verstappen’s 59-point championship lead.

Asked how confident he is, Norris replied: "I mean, quite a bit. We’ve been very good all weekend. People have caught up, clearly.

“We’ve gone into quali there and clearly Max improved a lot from yesterday into today. Mercedes as well, they were very quick in Q2, so they were there.

“They were up there on my tails, a bit close for my liking, comparing to what I had in FP3 and things.

“But I’m confident that the car is good in both quali and race. We showed that already on Friday.

“So I’m confident if I can just get ahead, then I get my head down and can go away.”