Norris beats himself up after Jeddah qualifying smash: 'I've let myself and the team down'

"I don't know what happened, I've not had any time to look into it or see, so just a mistake I guess," Norris began to GPblog and other media present in the paddock. The British driver lost control of his car in the first sector, and hit the wall hard on the left hand side.

"I was pretty comfortable, I was pretty happy until then, the car was strong. So disappointed, obviously I made my life and everyone's in the team a lot trickier for tomorrow and a lot harder because the guys have got a big job tonight to try and fix everything. But that's life, this happens on a rare occasion, so yeah, tough one," Norris explained.

Max Verstappen picked up the pieces upon the resumption of the session and secured a wonderful pole position in front of Oscar Piastri. Norris' teammate was just +0.010 behind Verstappen after a nailbiting finish to Q3.

Norris continued: "I should be fighting for pole and especially on a Q1 lap, you know, I shouldn't be taking any silly risks like I seem to have done. I need to go and review it all like I said, but, you know, not a guarantee we would have been on pole because Max looks like he did a good job. I mean Red Bull were quick to hold a qualifying, you know, it wasn't a surprise. So yeah, it would have been nice just to be in that fight."

Despite the negative reaction with his perforamnce, Norris was stil able to look ahead to tomorrow's race with a positive perspective. "But look at the bright side and hope that we can have a good race tomorrow. I don't think it's gonna be an easy one because I don't think it's very easy to overtake around here.

"But we have a strong car, clearly not as good as what we would like because we're not on pole and Max is first and George is only a tenth behind. So it's not like things are plain sailing at the minute. Big job to try and do tomorrow," Norris stated.

The championship leader is known for being hard on himself after making a mistake. The-25 year-old responded to the media similarly in Saudi Arabia, and his self criticism didn't end there.

The Brit called himself a 'f*cking idiot' after the session, and justified it to GPblog and others. "I was doing well until then and feeling comfortable. But I mean it makes sense, I shunted, So again, I'm not going to be proud, I'm not going to be happy. I've let myself down, I've let the team down and the guys have got a big job to do now to fix it all.