Adam Cooper F1

Lando Norris says that the low grip nature of the Las Vegas circuit doesn’t suit the McLaren MCL38 – and suggests that his qualifying performance showed how hard it is “to get everything out” of the car.

McLaren has had a string of pole positions this season, but in Las Vegas Norris could qualify only sixth, while his team mate Oscar Piastri was eighth.

Mercedes, Ferrari, Alpine and Red Bull each have at least one car ahead of Norris on the grid.

Asked by this writer about the surprise of the team only having the fifth fastest car in Q3 Norris joked about how rivals have talked up the Woking team this year.

“It’s incredible, especially because we have the fastest car by a mile, right?,” he said. “Yeah, weird. Maybe it’s the water in the tyres or something. All of this stuff, they’re right about everything!

“It’s just it’s very low grip, it just doesn’t suit us, doesn’t suit our characteristic of car. We have to drive the car on the perfect limit if we want to be quick. It takes a lot, I think, to get everything out of our car normally. When we do, we can be quick.

“Here it’s just too difficult to get everything out of the car. Every lap there’s another issue or a different issue, and it was just too much of a challenge. It’s been a challenge the last two days, nothing’s changed from yesterday.

“It’s just that others have turned up and gone lower fuel and things like that. Maybe it wasn’t our best Q3. 

“I made a couple of small mistakes, but mistakes which were just very difficult to avoid, and it was just too difficult to put a clean lap in, because I’m trying to go quicker.

“But at the same time, I’m trying to not make any mistake. And a mistake around here can easily be one-tenth, two-tenths gone. So just too much of a challenge for us out there.”

Norris admitted that it wasn’t easy to find the right qualifying strategy at a track where it is hard to warm up the tyres.

“We were doing different stuff to what everyone else was doing. I have been all weekend happy with doing out-push. For Q3 we tried something else, and maybe it was not the best. I did the warmup-push, and no magic came our way.

“I don’t think there was maybe a correct one, but I think that wasn’t our issue today. It was more just our car balance and how we have to drive our car, it makes it too difficult.

“That’s our issue. It’s not tyres. It’s not because they’re too hot or too cold or all of this nonsense, or the water. It’s just our car doesn’t see these conditions.”

Regarding Saturday’s race he said: “It could be that we tomorrow, we put on the hard tyre, and things come our way a little bit. Every race this year, we struggled with graining. We’ve not been good on the softer tyres.

“That’s the same now, but it’s almost the case in a in a quali lap, you almost start to grain the tyres already. And we struggle a lot in these kinds of conditions.

“So I’m hoping when you put a medium on a little bit, I mean, they still grain very easily, but when you put the hard on, hopefully things click a little bit.

“It’s just our weaknesses on how the car is with the front tyres. It’s been an issue for a while. We’ve not been able to tackle it as much as what I would have liked at this point. And we’re paying the price for that kind of thing.”

Norris downplayed his battle with World Championship leader Max Verstappen, who has a good chance of securing the title in Saturday’s race.

“Whether he wins or not tomorrow, for me is not going to change anything,” he said. “He’s pretty likely to win the championship. But I’m here to race and do my best in every single race I can, whether Max finishes ahead or not, that’s life.

“He’s only just ahead of us today. I think we have a chance to beat them tomorrow, but I’ll go out and do my best, like I do in every single race. And whatever the outcome is, the outcome is.”

George Russell says that his pole position at the Las Vegas GP came as “a real surprise” for his Mercedes Formula 1 team – and he’s at a loss to explain why the W15 is so competitive on the street track.

Between them Russell and team mate Lewis Hamilton topped every practice session over Thursday and Friday.

Russell was fastest in Q1 and then Hamilton repeated that feat in Q2. However while Hamilton then struggled and made mistakes in the final session Russell was fastest on his first run despite touching the wall.

After a front wing change he then went even fastest on his second run to secure pole.

“I’d love to tell you, to be honest, it’s been a real surprise for all of us,” he said when asked where the speed came from.

“And it’s something we need to really review because this is an outlier circuit. We haven’t done anything out of the ordinary specifically for Vegas, but for whatever reason, the conditions, the layout, are playing in our favour.

“And I’m kind of scratching my head as to why. You know, we will ride with it for the time being. But as I said, if you’re quick in Vegas, it’s a bit of a one-off circuit. So we need to understand it.

“And of course, one of our other poles was in Canada as well, which is very cold, street circuit-esque conditions too, so there’s a small trend.”

The car’s pace had been apparent from the start of practice on Thursday.

“It’s incredibly satisfying, and especially knowing the car’s been so quick all weekend,” said Russell.

“As a team, we’ve topped every single session. And nevertheless, when you get to Q3, you know what’s happened beforehand has no influence whatsoever. So the pressure kind of is ramped up.

“And it was a little bit touch and go for a moment because we had to change the front wing. I wasn’t sure if I was going to get the last lap. But then it was a super strong lap, especially the first two sectors, and just really, really pleased to secure the pole.”

Russell told his team to ensure that he was last out for the final runs at the end of Q3 to ensure that he had the best conditions, and he only had a few seconds to spare.

 Asked how much the track was ramping up he said: “Massively. I think probably between the very first car and the very last car who does their lap, it’s probably over a tenth. It’s probably the biggest track ramp of the whole season.

“So I wanted to put it all on the line. And, you know, it’s high risk. I knew that if there were no yellow flags, then we would, you know, we had the possibility to be on the front row.

“But ultimately, as well, I want to say thanks to the guys in the garage to get the front wing change so quick as well, because, as I said, I touched the wall in the first run and we could have missed that last run altogether.”

Russell is confident that he can hang on at the front of the field.

“I think tomorrow we should have the pace to fight for the win,” he said. “At the same time, there’s too many unknowns to confirm or deny that. A lot of it will be graining, graining limitation, who can control the graining better.

“But even if we might see some teams struggling a lot on medium tyres, then the hard resets everything again because no one’s run the hard. And we know that we are not the best team on hard tyres this season. Too many unknowns to tell, but I’m confident that we can fight for a win.”

Max Verstappen admits that the lack of an ultra low drag rear wing for the Red Bull RB20 has been “a bit of a handicap” in Las Vegas.

The team opted some time ago not to devoted limited resources in terms of both the cost cap and aero testing into making a wing that would only be used at fast circuits like Vegas and Monza.

The team realised early in Thursday’s practice session that rivals had a much more effective package for the street circuit.

Some modifications to the wings of the cars for Friday by trimming away some carbon.

After a difficult start to FP3 managed to find some performance, with Verstappen eventually taking fifth on the grid.

“We know that with our wing naturally you lose top speed, especially with DRS open,” said the Dutchman. “It’s a bit of a handicap. We knew that, and that’s something, of course that we have to deal with on a track like this, a track like Monza.

“But also besides that, I always felt like the tyres were a bit of a struggle for us to get them in the right operating window. I do think that we did the best we could in qualifying with what we had, and then P5 is the result.

“I mean, we got a bit lucky of course with Lewis [Hamilton] not putting a lap in, otherwise it would have been P6. I think we really maximised what we could.”

Verstappen confirmed that the team had made a strategic call not to produce an ultra low drag wing.

“We opted to not make one,” he said. “We don’t have one. So this is already from 2022. I think we just never thought that we would run it that low, and then with the budget cap you choose your priorities.

“Would I have liked to have a lower wing, a lower downforce wing? Yeah for sure, or at least a different shape, a more efficient shape. It’s something that we’ll look at.

“But on the other hand there’s only one more year left with these rules, and I don’t know if it makes sense. For me, at least, it feels a bit like we throw away two race weekends like this, because you definitely lose too much on the straight.”

Verstappen admitted that the wing will make his life harder in the race.

“Naturally of course, the wing is not the most efficient,” he said. “Hopefully with everyone’s DRS closed it’s a little bit better, because when you trim your DRS you have less of a DRS effect. And that’s what is quite painful in qualifying.

“In the race, when you try to pass people, you have less of an effect. So that will be a bit more difficult.

“But yeah, hopefully we’re just decent on tyres. My long runs haven’t been really that good, but we also made some changes to the car, and hopefully that will help the tyres out as well.”

Regarding RBR’s main rivals he said: “Well, hopefully, of course, I can fight really hard. I don’t think at the moment I can fight with Ferrari or Mercedes, they have been too quick.

“And of course, Lewis is starting P10, so he will move forward. And with McLaren, I don’t know, both of us were struggling a bit in the long run, but they made some changes. We made some changes. So we have to wait and see how that will how that will go.”