That said, the two McLaren drivers found themselves experiencing entirely opposite emotions after locking out the top five during Sprint Qualifying at the Singapore Grand Prix. Oscar Piastri steered his machine to fourth place, while his teammate Lando Norris slotted in right behind him in fifth on the timesheets at the Marina Bay Street Circuit.
Here's the thing: a frantic SQ3 session saw Norris briefly rocket to the top spot ahead of Piastri and the Mercedes entries. But as Ferrari and Red Bull rolled out their runs at different moments, the changing track conditions pushed the Briton down to P5. Piastri managed to find an improvement on his second effort, jumping back ahead of his garage-mate to claim fourth. In the Australian's eyes, that was the absolute limit of what the car could deliver.
No, I don’t think that’s the reason. I just don’t think I put together a very good lap – that was all. No excuse,
"I think that was more or less what we could've done," Piastri explained. "It’s very tricky on a Sprint weekend to get all the lap time out of the car here, but I felt like on the softs things came alive a lot more. I was struggling on the medium and then once we put the softs on, I felt pretty happy. Not a bad effort."
Digging into the tricky nature of the venue, where he previously highlighted issues at Turns 2 and 3, Piastri noted that he was still wrestling with several traits inside the cockpit. The overall balance remained close to normal, but extracting speed required aggressive driving. "You’ve got to really wring its neck to be quick," he added. "Once we added a bit more grip in with the softs, it was a bit better, but still a challenge."
On the other side of the garage, the team had spent time fixing the straight-line speed gremlins that hampered Norris during the previous weekend at Sepang. While Norris acknowledged that the squad had made a clear step forward, he refused to blame the punishing conditions for his final position, taking full accountability for his flying laps instead.
"No, I don’t think that’s the reason. I just don’t think I put together a very good lap – that was all. No excuse," Norris stated. Reflecting on the wider picture, he added: "I think [I’m happy] from what I’ve seen so far. 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. It’s just simply that I didn't do a good enough job."
