Norris: "It's a shame" as grid penalty undercuts best qualifying of the season

Credit: Formula One

Reigning World Champion Lando Norris produced one of his strongest laps of 2026 at Spa-Francorchamps. It just won't count for much on Sunday. The McLaren driver qualified third, four tenths off pole, and topped the times outright after the first runs in Q3. A ten-place grid penalty means none of that translates to the grid. He starts 12th instead.

McLaren made that trade-off deliberately. Norris is fitting his fourth power electronics unit of the season, beyond his allocation, after failures in China and Japan cost him earlier in the year. Spa was chosen specifically because overtaking is easier here than at the tighter tracks coming next. Norris knew that going in. It didn't make Saturday sting any less.

"It's nice to be standing here, just not nice knowing I have to go ten places back tomorrow," he said. "It's unfortunate that this isn't where we're genuinely starting tomorrow, because it would be nice to have a little fight with these guys."

He called it a good weekend anyway. Spa carries extra weight for him. His mother is Belgian, and he's spoken before about the race feeling like a second home. "It's a little bit of a home race, like you said, for me, so it's always a little boost here."

The lap itself had a what-if attached. Norris ran fastest after the opening Q3 runs, then went off at the Fagnes chicane on his second attempt. He wasn't sure what it cost him. "I don't have a delta on my dash, so I don't know if I was up or not," he said.

"Honestly, I didn't think I was going any better than my first lap. My first lap was pretty amazing." Antonelli's final lap put him four tenths clear regardless, a gap Norris didn't think was ever realistic to close. "I knew if Kimi was going quicker, he wasn't going quicker by half a tenth. That's never been the case all season."

McLaren insists nothing new arrived on the car this weekend, bar a rear wing worth barely half a tenth. Norris put the pace down to the track suiting the car, not a step forward. "It's simply the car performing better on a different track," he said. "We performed well in Miami. We've had a couple of other races that were not so good."

He was quick to credit his own execution too, calling his Q3 lap among the best of his career. But he stayed grounded about what that actually buys him. "It doesn't matter if you do the best lap of your life. It doesn't mean you're on pole all of a sudden. We just need to add more performance to the car."

Sunday now becomes a recovery drive from twelfth. Norris expects to make up ground, just not sure how much. "I think we're clearly much quicker than quite a few of the cars," he said, name-checking Bortoleto and an "upgraded" Racing Bulls car as the closest threats through the midfield.

Getting back into the mix with Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari is the real target. "That's just the target," he said. Whether Spa's long straights hand him the overtakes he needs will decide how much of Saturday's pace actually shows up in the results.