Norris admits 'no excuse' after Piastri outpaces him in Singapore sprint qualifying

Lando Norris conceded he had “no excuse” for being outpaced by McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri in sprint qualifying at the Singapore Grand Prix, after ending up fifth in the top-10 shootout at Marina Bay while Piastri claimed fourth.

“I just don’t think I put together a very good lap,” Norris said. “That was all, no excuse.”

The gap between the two McLaren drivers in the final phase was 0.133 seconds — a reversal of fortunes after Norris had edged Piastri by 0.020s in SQ1 and pulled 0.534s clear in SQ2. The shootout result means Piastri has now outqualified his team-mate in three of the last five sessions, a run that includes Baku, where Norris was particularly hampered by a fuel injection problem that also affected him in Malaysia.

McLaren arrived in Singapore with a fix for those fuel injection issues, which had been restricting the MCL40’s top speed. Norris indicated the solution appeared to be working, though he stopped short of a full verdict. “I think so, from what I’ve seen so far,” he said. “I don’t know everything just yet, to be honest. The guys are still looking into it and it’s been a busy day. A lot of things seem good. We seem closer as a team. Just simply, I didn’t do a good enough job.”

Piastri, for his part, was broadly satisfied with his session, crediting a switch to the soft compound tyre for unlocking his pace. “Pretty happy there,” the Australian said. “I think that was more or less what we could have done. I was struggling on the medium, and then once we put the soft on, I felt pretty happy.”

The first sector of the Marina Bay circuit remained a work in progress for Piastri. “I was struggling with a few things in the car through there,” he admitted. “You’ve got to really wring its neck to be quick. And once we added a bit more grip in with the soft, it was a bit better. But, yeah, still a challenge.”

The Singapore sprint shootout result extends a difficult recent run for Norris, who had dominated Piastri 8-0 in qualifying from Barcelona to Zandvoort earlier in the season but has since seen the momentum shift toward his team-mate.