Lando Norris secured the tenth pole position of his F1 career, beating teammate Piastri by 0.084 seconds – find out where the Briton managed to find time compared to the Australian and how the balance of power developed during the lap.
Norris and Piastre left all the work for the end of Q3 as both failed badly in their first attempts, especially Norris who went outside the track in the fourth turn.
But in the last attempts both did a good job and drove very similar lap times even though they were strong in different parts of the track.
At the beginning of the lap, Norris arrived at the starting and finishing line with a slightly higher speed and led with 0.019 s until the braking for the first turn, and thanks to the higher minimum speed in the first turn, he gained another 0.068 s, after which the difference almost stagnated until the braking for the third turn.
In turn three, Norris manages to transfer a little more speed into the top of the corner and gains another 0.032 s, but Piastri is marginally faster at full throttle exiting turn four, where Norris made a mistake on his first attempt, and is therefore a little faster on the full throttle stretch through turn five, on the way to turns 6 and 7 where Piastri was slightly faster and gains 0.042 s.
On the way to the fast turns 9 and 10, their speed trace is almost identical, but in that fast combination 9/10 Norris was more conservative and Piastre regained as much as 0.078 s from his advantage, leading Norris for the first time in the lap.
Before braking for the slow turn 11, Piastri has the biggest advantage of the whole lap (about 0.03 s), but he loses it completely already in that corner where Norris manages to transfer more speed and gain 0.069 s, he holds that advantage until turn 13 where Piastri made a mistake in the first lap and further increases the advantage by an additional 0.059 s.
Piastri had slightly better acceleration through the final corner, but that only helped him cut Norris’ lead to a final 0.084s.
