Lando Norris: We had no chance of pole position

      Lando Norris posted the second-fastest time in qualifying, but still lost almost three tenths to Max Verstappen. The British McLaren driver can't explain why, given that his teammate lost even more time to pole.

      Lando Norris (2nd): "In the end, on the last attempt I managed to pick up a couple of tenths. For some reason it was a bit harder to drive today. Yesterday I was quite comfortable behind the wheel, and I don't know what caused today's difficulties: maybe everyone else just improved, or the wind affected us a bit more. In general, it became harder both for me and my teammate to do clean laps and show the kind of speed that Max did. But we kept attacking, and I'm still pleased to have taken second. It could have been worse. However, we had no chance of pole today. As for tomorrow's race, I just want nobody to crash into me! I'm looking forward to Sunday's Grand Prix, I hope we can fight with Max. We've had some good battles in the past, so I hope we have another good race ahead."

      Oscar Piastri (6th): "Actually I didn't make any mistakes, but throughout qualifying I just didn't have the feeling that I found the right rhythm. There were issues all the time. Of course, after the session we'll try to figure out what's behind it. It's hard to say whether we'll be able to recover during tomorrow's race, because it seems Max has shown excellent pace all weekend, so we'll see if that repeats tomorrow. I think I need to try to get myself in the right mindset for the race, although naturally when you can't show the speed you want the feeling isn't great. But there will be plenty of opportunities tomorrow — I hope the car will be capable of a good race pace and we can use an effective strategy. Overtaking is quite possible on this track, so we'll see what we can achieve. There's still a long way to go until the end of the weekend."