Norris critical of himself after missing out on pole: 'Silly question'

Norris ended up more than a tenth short of Charles Leclerc's pole lap. The Briton did have another strong qualifying session. In Qatar, Norris still beat himself up when he exceeded the track limits in both qualifying runs and therefore had to start from P10. In Austin, Norris may start further from the front.

"I think when you realise where Max probably should have been in terms of overall pace, I still think the Red Bull was probably close to being the quickest. And I didn't expect to beat Ferrari, so I think we're in probably the position we expected to be. Probably closer to pole than I was expecting. I think there was still that little chance to potentially get it today, so probably similar to Charles. Pleasantly surprised to be sitting here in the Top 3," Norris said after qualifying.

Where Norris missed out on pole in America

When asked if pole would have been possible if McLaren had two fresh soft tyres left for qualifying, Norris is harsh: ''It's a silly question. You don't know that. So if I just did a good lap, maybe then it could have been pole. I just made a few mistakes. I'm sure a lot of people made mistakes today. It's not an easy track to put it all together."

Starting from P2, Norris still has a good chance of victory. The last few times, the number two also started the Grand Prix well and Norris is happy with that fact. It doesn't give Norris any more confidence, as he doesn't like statistics like that. When questioned about what exactly went wrong to take pole, Norris said the following.

"Turn 11 is where it all went wrong. I think the rest was maybe a little bit the last corner. But Turn 11, I just, I know we've been struggling a little bit with just consistency of car and braking performance. And the car just turned a bit better than I was expecting. And I mean, I braked later, but then the car also rotated better. So I was expecting to almost miss the apex a bit more. And I ended up just clipping the curb.

"And when you clip the curb in [Turn] 11, it's the run the whole way down the straight that you lose. So it's just a half-a-tenth mistake initially because you get on power a bit later. But then because you get on power later, you lose easily another half a tenth, or sometimes more, all the way down to Turn 12. The rest of the lap, apart from maybe the last corner, was, I think, very strong. I was very happy with Turn 1 and Sector 1. Just two places, [where] I feel like I probably lost it today."