Max Verstappen believes Lando Norris’s driving on the final slowdown lap in Q3 potentially cost him a shot at pole position for the Singapore Grand Prix, because the McLaren driver's presence led to his Red Bull understeering at the entry to the Turn 16/17 chicane.
When asked in the post-qualifying press conference if pole position was on before that moment, Verstappen responded that “it was close” before explaining his frustration at Norris creating a disturbance in airflow towards the Red Bull while the McLaren was on its in-lap.
After running deep into Turn 16, the time loss led to Verstappen backing off even though he did complete the lap, which meant he failed to improve on the time of 1m29.340s he posted on the first runs in Q3.
That left him 0.175s behind George Russell's Mercedes and in second place, whereas approaching the braking zone for Turn 16 he was only around one-tenth off Russell’s pace.
"It was close,” said Verstappen. “The lap itself was coming nicely, but around here to nail all the corners is very tough.
"Unfortunately, I had a car like two seconds in front of me in the final chicane. In qualifying, you cannot have that, you cannot have any kind of disturbance when you want to push in Q3 and that's what happened.
“I had to abort the lap because of that, so that was a bit unfortunate otherwise I think it would have been a very close battle for first. But it is what it is, [there’s] nothing that you can do about that, so you just move forwards.”
Verstappen and Norris were at very different points on their final runs, hence them being out of phase with each other.
Norris was the second driver to hit the track for the final runs, behind only Haas driver Ollie Bearman.
Verstappen did not leave the Red Bull garage until Norris was already at Turn 13 on his out-lap and was the last driver to hit the track, behind the other McLaren of Oscar Piastri.
That meant Verstappen was in the pit-exit when Norris, on his flying lap, went past.
As soon as Norris completed his flying lap, race engineer Will Joseph gave him the first warning about Piastri being behind him with regular updates until Norris let him past at Turn 10.
Joseph then warned Norris of Verstappen’s approach, with regular updates about the gap. Norris pulled to the left of the track after going through the Turn 16/17 chicane and headed into the pits.
While Norris did not impede Verstappen in the conventional sense of a car being directly in the way, hence the stewards did not investigate, the Red Bull driver was frustrated that Norris's nearby presence cost downforce.
“In qualifying, you always try to leave gaps of six, seven seconds at least because you want no disturbance,” explained Verstappen.
“Normally in Q3 you don't see a car unless you're on a different programme. But around here is quite clear what you want to do, so you leave quite big gaps [to] everyone.
“But then, of course, sometimes it happens in a street circuit people are bored, make mistakes so when you then get a car two, three seconds in front of you…
"I mean, you need every kind of clean air that you can have on a Q3 lap especially because you're fully on the limit with braking and everything. I lost a bit of downforce with that, so I went straight on. That's it."
There's no certainty Verstappen would have beaten Russell with a clean run through Turn 16/17.
As he was already around one-tenth behind Russell, he had work to do in the final sector, and even though he did then gain in the braking zone (having not braked noticeably late based on the publicly-available data compared to his first run), that was likely down to the reduction in braking efficiency thanks to downforce loss.
However, Russell had lost time compared to Verstappen from Turn 16 to the end of the lap on the first run, albeit not as much as a tenth, meaning that Verstappen potentially had the pace to close that gap. What is clear is that Verstappen's lap would likely have been quicker than his first-run attempt.
None of this is an argument for a penalty for Norris. Verstappen’s concern is more about what he clearly sees as a breach of the usual etiquette in qualifying, whereby teams and drivers do their best not to get in each other’s way even over and above what might be considered impeding.
Although Verstappen said he would not talk to Norris about the incident, he did warn in the television unilateral interview immediately after qualifying that “it will be remembered”. And he later made it clear that this could have been avoided.
“It’s quite clear that's something that is not nice when it happens to someone. I think in general, we're always quite good at that, all the drivers we try to stay out of the way. Sometimes, of course it's always a bit more complicated in certain scenarios, so every scenario is a bit different. But in this case, in Q3, with only 10 cars on the track, it could have been avoided."
Norris was nonplussed when asked about Verstappen’s criticisms, saying “they always complain about everything, that’s Red Bull”.
