Lando Norris edges out McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri to claim pole in Belgium

Yahoo

4 days ago

Lando Norris will start from pole position for the Belgian Grand Prix in his bid to seal a hat-trick of consecutive victories after beating championship rival Oscar Piastri to top spot.
Norris finished third, a place behind McLaren team-mate Piastri in the earlier sprint race at Spa-Francorchamps, but the British driver bounced back to secure his second pole in three races.
Charles Leclerc took third for Ferrari but team-mate Lewis Hamilton's weekend took another nightmare twist after he qualified only 16th.
Max Verstappen – who won the first Formula One race staged following Christian Horner's dismissal as Red Bull team principal in Saturday's 15-lap dash – was fourth, one position clear of Williams' Alex Albon, with George Russell sixth for Mercedes.
Piastri extended his championship advantage over Norris from eight points to nine and appeared to hold the upper hand over his team-mate heading into qualifying.
However, Norris delivered with his first lap of Q3 to hold a near two-tenth advantage over Piastri heading into the concluding runs and – although he failed to improve, and Piastri did – it was enough to take first place as he looks to build on his wins in Austria and Silverstone.
Norris qualified six tenths behind Piastri in Friday's qualifying and he said: 'Everyone was quite worried after yesterday. But I was always confident, so it is nice to get back on top.
'The car has been flying all weekend and Oscar and I have been pushing each other a lot. You can see each other's strengths and weaknesses (on the shared team data) so that makes it a tough battle.'
Rain is forecast for Sunday's 44-lap race, and Norris continued: 'I prefer it to stay dry. But I don't mind if it is wet, or dry, or somewhere in the middle. I just hope it is an exciting race.'
Hamilton, who started 18th and finished 15th in the earlier sprint race earlier, was eliminated in Q1 for Sunday's main event after his best lap was chalked off by the stewards.
The Briton thought he had done enough to haul his Ferrari into the next phase of qualifying when he posted the seventh best time. But moments later, his lap was deleted after he was adjudged to have run all four wheels of his Ferrari off the circuit at Raidillon. That dropped him way down the order.
'Is everything OK?' Hamilton asked on the radio. 'Track limits,' replied Hamilton's race engineer, Ricardo Adami.
'Am I out?' Hamilton replied. 'Lap time is deleted, P16,' came the response.
There was no response from the 40-year-old who is left to reflect on another sobering result of his difficult start to life at Ferrari.
Hamilton, who spun in qualifying for the sprint, enters Sunday's race without a podium for Ferrari – the deepest he has gone into a season in his career without a top-three finish.
Hamilton's replacement at Mercedes, Kimi Antonelli, also failed to emerge from Q1 and will start 18th, with both Aston Martins on the final row of the grid following a dismal qualifying session for the British team. Fernando Alonso will line up from 19th, with team-mate Lance Stroll 20th and last.
Ollie Bearman finished an impressive seventh in the sprint, but then qualified 12th as he complained the start of his final lap was compromised by Red Bull's Yuki Tsunoda.