Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri both took the blame for McLaren’s toughest qualifying of the season in Baku after a bruising Q3 that featured crashes, drizzle and fierce winds. Piastri hit the wall at Turn 3, bringing out a late red flag and locking him into ninth on the grid. Norris, who chose to be first across the line on the final, one-shot laps, initially placed strongly but was shuffled down to seventh as others improved behind.
'I kind of look like the loser'
Norris admitted he and the team called it wrong by leading the queue in the spitting rain, accepting that the decision backfired as track conditions marginally improved for those behind. “Sometimes it goes your way around here, sometimes it doesn’t,” he said, insisting he still executed his lap and that the choice made sense at the time. The Briton summed up the optics bluntly: “I kind of look like the loser.”
Piastri’s costly Q3 error
Piastri’s Turn 3 crash curtailed his own charge and heightened the jeopardy for everyone else. It also framed McLaren’s what-might-have-been: the team had a chance to capitalise in the title fight, only for errors and timing to turn the session into damage limitation.
Winds, walls and a car on the edge
With a brutal tailwind through the Turn 4 sequence that could swing from 50 kph to 10 kph from one lap to the next, drivers were walking a tightrope. Norris highlighted how easy it was to overstep by a fraction and end up in the barriers, noting how a more “forgiving” balance would have helped in the turbulence.
Taking responsibility, eyeing the race
Both drivers accepted accountability for the result, calling it a day of hard lessons rather than lost belief. From seventh and ninth, McLaren’s task on Sunday is clear: keep it clean, seize any openings and claw back points against rivals who start ahead.
