“It was pretty poor really in terms of gap to the cars ahead,” he explained. “I thought my lap was pretty strong, it was my best lap by half a second, so thankfully I was not 1.3 seconds off. It was a good lap. I think I got everything out of it.
“We’re just slow. I thought we improved the car in some areas but we need to understand… like we’re just slow in the straight, we’re slow in every corner. It’s just the car’s not very efficient. We lack downforce and we have too much drag. So yeah, we’re in a pickle.
“This is a track where you need to be efficient. There’s so many places here where you rely upon drag, because you don’t have a straight-line mode in certain places, and this is where we lose a lot. And also just in every straight – there’s a lot of straights here – and just high speed. We’re not very good in the high-speed and we lose a lot in both that and slow speed. This shows who has a good car and who doesn’t, and it’s clear that we don’t.”
Asked what he thinks he can do with the car he has in Sunday’s race, the 26-year-old said: “I have no idea. I mean, we’ll try and get a good start again, obviously what made my race this morning [in the Sprint] was a good start. I don’t know how I finished P3 this morning when we’re seven tenths a lap off, you know that’s pretty insane.
“I think realistically a P5 should be best. We try and beat the Red Bulls, that’s the main thing we can ask for. I think to beat cars that are seventh tenths quicker, both the Ferraris and a Mercedes, is just a bit stupid.”
Meanwhile, Oscar Piastri in the other McLaren will start two places behind Norris in eighth.
The Australian agreed with his team mate that Qualifying had been a difficult session, despite changes to the car.
“Everywhere,” he said when asked where the team was lacking pace. “Just incredibly tough. We thought we made some decent improvements to the car, but I don’t know if we just struggled a lot more in these windier conditions or what happened, but it was a real handful.
“The car has definitely been more challenging than we expected. Been struggling a lot with the balance of the car. We were pretty optimistic that we’d made a good step forward for Qualifying but unfortunately it didn’t change much. Just struggling for grip overall.”
.webp?ssl=1 "James Hinchcliffe picks his top five drivers of the 2026 Formula 1 season so far")
