2023 Qatar Grand Prix – qualifying “It’s a tough result to accept today"

Lusail International Circuit, Friday, 6 October

Hear from McLaren Formula 1 drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and Team Principal Andrea Stella after qualifying for the Qatar Grand Prix.

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FP1 1m28.380s (+0.952s)  20 laps 9th
Q1 1m25.266s (Softs)   4th
Q2 1m24.724s (Softs)   4th
Q3 1m24.540s (Softs)   6th

“P6. It’s a bit of a shame to get my lap deleted at the end. It makes life slightly trickier for Sunday, but the pace in the car was decent. It’s a shame we both overstepped the mark a little bit on our laps. We’ll try again tomorrow and hopefully we can do a bit better.”

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FP1 1m28.441s (+1.013s)  24 laps 10th
Q1 1m25.131s (Softs)   2nd
Q2 1m24.685s (Softs)   3rd
Q3 No time set [Lap time deleted]   10th

“A disappointing day, I had a correction and oversteer, went off and the lap time was deleted. I should have been much higher up today. The pace of the car has been amazing, the team have done a great job. I made too many mistakes and paid the price.

“There are definitely opportunities to recover across the weekend, but right now I'm frustrated that I didn’t get the job done in quali, which is to put in good laps. We’ll work hard to prepare for the Sprint tomorrow and try and make up for it on Sunday.”

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“6th and 10th is a disappointing result as it doesn’t reflect the potential of the car. Our pace today was, again, quite strong which in itself is encouraging. While it’s a tough result to accept today, the weekend is quite long. We have a Sprint Shootout and a Sprint race to come and the race itself will be quite interesting from a tyre point of view. So, there are plenty of opportunities to recover and score good points. We now turn our attention to maximising the Sprint tomorrow and the Grand Prix on Sunday.”

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