McLaren drivers reflect on ‘kick back down to reality’ in Miami Qualifying hours after Sprint success

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have given their take on the change in fortunes that saw McLaren face a trickier Qualifying in Miami hours after winning the Sprint, with Piastri calling it a “kick back down to reality”.

The weekend got off to a strong start for the Woking-based squad – one of many outfits to bring an upgrade package to the event – as Norris sealed pole position in Friday’s Sprint Qualifying, which he then converted into a win in the Sprint earlier on Saturday.

However, McLaren experienced a tougher outing in Qualifying later in the day amid a competitive session that saw Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull all seemingly in contention. Kimi Antonelli ultimately claimed pole, while Norris placed in fourth and Piastri wound up in seventh place.

Asked after the session about where he felt the car had not been as strong relative to earlier in the weekend, Norris explained: “I’ve not looked at comparing to the others just yet, but a bit everywhere, honestly. I feel like I was doing a better job, but just we were slower.

“I think today was probably a little bit more where we should be. I know it was close, so you can probably say we could have been third. I think the weird thing is how much pace we lost from yesterday to today really, so we need to understand that first of all.

“Some of that is kind of conditions – it’s still a lot hotter than it was at this point yesterday, and the wind was a little bit different. But all in all, it was just a lot trickier – a much more messy session from our side as a team, myself included.

“Some things to understand, but I think it wasn’t like we did a bad job, it was just yesterday I think everyone else did do a bad job! We capitalised, and today we are more where we deserve to be.”

While Norris acknowledged that “some little tweaks” had been made to the MCL40 between the Sprint and Qualifying, he joked that this was “nothing that should make us slower”.

On the other side of the garage, there was a tense end to Q1 for Piastri as the Australian only just made it through to Q2. After progressing from there to the top-10 shootout, Piastri did not have the pace to be in the final battle for pole but suggested that he had expected the margins to be fine.

“We knew it was going to be tight,” the nine-time race winner said. “I think Antonelli’s lap is more what we expected from Mercedes, to be honest. Obviously Lando was pretty close to P2 or P3.

“For myself, just a very messy session, and a lot of things didn’t quite work the way we expected or hoped, so some digging to do there. Just a bit of a tricky one, with the car as well.

"Obviously incredibly tough conditions – it’s quite windy, extremely hot, so I think it just puts everything to the test.”

Pushed on whether the car had improved throughout the session or whether it had remained the same, Piastri answered: “More or less the same the whole way through. It certainly wasn’t easy and I think we did a good job yesterday of getting the car in a good window quickly.

“The car didn’t feel really much different – I think the others just caught up and maximised what they had a lot better. Not a huge surprise, a little bit of a kick back down to reality, but I think there are also things on our side that we can do better, so plenty to work on.”