Lando Norris made "too many mistakes", McLaren “not quick enough”

Lando Norris says his own mistakes were to blame for qualifying down in sixth for the sprint race at the F1 Chinese Grand Prix.

The championship leader was favourite heading into qualifying after winning in Australia last weekend and setting the pace in Friday’s sole practice session at the Shanghai International Circuit.

But when it mattered, Norris was left to rue errors on both of his flying laps on a single set of tyres during SQ3, leaving him only sixth on the grid.

“I made a mistake. I locked up in the last corner,” Norris admitted. “But we're just struggling a bit more now. Just not quick enough, simply. Struggling a lot with the car.

“It’s more on me rather than the car. I can't make the car perfect. But, no, this was me just trying to just push a bit too much.

“So [I] just need to back off a little bit and not try to push too much. I think the car's still good and in a good window, maybe not good enough for pole. But we can definitely go forward.”

Norris put his mistakes down to trying to "make up” for his McLaren car not being “quick enough” in China.

“Our difficulties that we've been struggling with showed a lot more today. So nothing more than that, honestly. Just too many mistakes, it is just too difficult of a car to drive,” he added.

“I think just throughout the day we've been struggling a bit with the front locking and struggling a lot in the last corner with all the tailwinds. So it is kind of a lot more aligned with Bahrain [pre-season testing]. Just a lot windier when the wind's blowing, then we struggle a lot more.

“So I think both myself and Oscar struggled more, clearly me more than him. So, yeah, just pushing a bit hard to try and make up for not quite being quick enough.”

Oscar Piastri felt McLaren got run plan wrong

Norris’s teammate Oscar Piastri fared better in SQ3 as he took third on the grid, behind Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

But the Australian felt McLaren had got their run-plan wrong for the final part of sprint qualifying after trying something new.

“I think we were probably quick at the wrong points of it, unfortunately,” Piastri summarised.

“SQ1 and SQ2 felt good, and then SQ3, we tried something a bit different and went out much earlier and tried two laps, which I'm not sure was the best thing in the end, but I think it's something we need to have a look at.

“I think the pace in the car is still very strong and I'm still confident to fight from third. It has been difficult, I think, with the track surface, it's got a lot of grip, but it's very peaky and I think it's been pretty tough all day to just keep on top of the car.

“I honestly think we did a good job of trying to tame it for sprint qualifying, just maybe got the run plan a bit wrong.

“So it's been an interesting challenge. The grip has been a lot better than last season, which is nice, and I think there's some things we can do better tomorrow.”