An unexpected setback for McLaren in Las Vegas, with disastrous qualifying results for Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, who both reported having faced significant difficulties during this morning’s qualifying session.
For McLaren, the Las Vegas Grand Prix will be decisive: on one hand, the team is on the brink of securing the Constructors’ Championship for the first time since 1998, a huge source of pride for Team Principal Andrea Stella, the Italian engineer leading the Woking-based team. However, McLaren enters the Nevada weekend with a slim 36-point lead, a gap that Ferrari could close, especially considering the strong performances of Carlos Sainz, who will start from second place, and Charles Leclerc in fourth. Both Ferrari drivers will start ahead of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
Furthermore, Lando Norris’ chances of winning the World Championship could be all but erased, as he will line up in sixth position on the grid, in the third row alongside Max Verstappen, ahead of the British driver. Norris remains the only challenger to the Dutchman, who is leading the World Championship.
The Bristol-born driver explained in the post-qualifying press conferences what went wrong, stating that problems with the MCL38 had already emerged during practice sessions, but the team had managed to extract the best performance from the car, something they couldn’t achieve in qualifying.
“It was just very difficult today, in fact, we’ve been struggling all weekend. Maybe the times don’t reflect it too much, but I think we know we’ve been struggling a bit; putting together a clean lap has been very hard. You’re trying to find time on the lap, but at the same time, as soon as you push a little too hard, another problem comes up, a problem you’ve never had before. It’s been too difficult, too challenging to drive. There were some laps in practice where maybe you were driving at 99%, and it seemed like the lap was good, but the chance of doing it every time was too low today ,” commented Lando Norris.
Additionally, speaking to Sky Sports F1 Italy, Norris shared his thoughts on the threat posed by Ferrari, which sits behind McLaren in the Constructors’ standings: “Both Ferraris will start ahead of us, and we’ll have to try to beat them or at least limit the damage in terms of points. Clearly, this weekend, they are much faster than us, so we’ll see. It will definitely be a big challenge for us tomorrow.”
Oscar Piastri, qualifying in eighth place, echoed his teammate’s sentiment, almost ruling out the possibility of a podium: “I felt that in Q1 and Q2 we were relatively well placed, but then in Q3 we didn’t have much to offer. My lap didn’t seem great, but it was never going to be close to pole, so we need to do some work to understand why we had difficulties. I was a bit surprised to be so far back; I thought a podium was possible, but I didn’t think we’d be this far off. It’s been more complicated than we expected “.
Photos: McLaren.