Norris surprised by his P3 finish in Sprint Qualifying

Quoted by the official Formula 1 website, Norris was asked right after the session whether his result was a good one given how things had gone earlier that day: “Very. A very good result, actually a good surprise. I think after this morning we were a little bit worried, let’s say, about how far off we were and more just the lack of confidence in the car.”

He also admitted that his lap wasn’t the best lap and that he could have got more out of it. But when he saw the gap to Mercedes he said he couldn’t have done much more. Norris also reflected on how the upgrades which McLaren brought in Montreal have been feeling: “I think it certainly felt decent, some things were maybe a bit more questionable and we probably need just more time to review things and look back, especially because it’s such a weird track.”

“It’s so low grip, you’re kind of bouncing off the kerbs and stuff, so you’re not getting a true representation of everything and it’s hard to back it up with what we have in the wind tunnel and things like that. We need a bit more time with some bits and we’ll probably reintroduce some of them next weekend or in Barcelona,” he explained.

“At the same time, the rest of the car now was clearly working well and I felt confident in SQ3, especially on the soft tyre, which is maybe the first time this weekend that I felt that confidence,” he concluded while adding that it is a good step forward and he’ll see what he can improve knowing that into the Sprint race.