The US Grand Prix weekend is a massive opportunity for Lando Norris to make significant inroads into Max Verstappen’s championship lead. However, the Briton has had a mixed bag Friday with a poor sprint qualifying performance. Norris fell short off the sprint pole by over two-tenths of a second. But the McLaren driver isn’t blaming the upgrades to his MCL38 for his poor showing.
Speaking after the sprint qualifying session in Austin, Norris said as quoted by BBC, “Not very good, I’m P4. Not a good day. Been struggling all day with the balance and the setup. In a way, happy with P4 because it could have been a lot worse, but the lap was shocking.”
Max secures Sprint pole in Austin whilst Lando starts P4 pic.twitter.com/AqacaiD1gS
— Motorsport.com (@Motorsport) October 18, 2024
McLaren have brought seven upgrades [four performance and three circuit-specific] to the US GP weekend. However, it did not show much improvement in the MCL38’s performance around the Circuit of the Americas. Norris downplayed the novelty of the Austin package by saying, “It’s not a new package, it’s pretty much the same.”
This may be an indirect hint at the US GP upgrade package not being as effective as the team’s previous two big packages in Miami and Zandvoort. Those two weekends saw a considerable step forward in McLaren’s performance with significant floor upgrades on the MCL38.
As for Norris’ struggles at COTA, he wasn’t able to optimize the performance like many other drivers, which cost them crucial lap time. Even Verstappen complained about the ride height of his car, which may have compromised his speed at several corners.
Nevertheless, it proved to be a super close sprint qualifying with less than three-tenths covering the top five. Verstappen beat George Russell to pole on his final run in SQ3 by 0.012 seconds. Amid this, Norris would been ruing his missed chance.
Norris is on the back foot in Austin
After dominating the Singapore GP a month ago, Norris seems to have resumed his title challenge on the wrong foot in Austin. The #4 driver has missed out on chances to reduce Verstappen’s championship lead on several occasions this season and now the US GP could add to the list of those races.
With only six race weekends remaining, Norris needs to make the most of all the available opportunities to get closer to the three-time world champion in the drivers’ standings. Three of these six weekends [including Austin] are sprint weekends, so those are bonus points available to the McLaren man to further damage Verstappen’s title hopes.
However, his US GP weekend starting on a subpar note seems to have boosted the Dutchman’s morale — which has been down due to Red Bull’s plethora of issues with its car handling characteristics. Verstappen still has shown immense character and has kept pushing and maximizing his results to defend his 52-point championship lead.
His sprint pole in Austin is another testament to how he can turn the odds in his favor despite his title rival having the faster car. If the Red Bull driver can continue his good showing in Austin, he could further diminish Norris’ hopes of winning the 2024 world championship.
