Norris’s chance disappeared when he set off in the dirty air behind Alex Albon’s Williams, and he also erred at the final corner when running into the gravel.
“It’s been a good day, which is nice for a change,” smiled Piastri, who’s a long shot for the title now but has not given up belief, having quickly rejected McLaren’s overtures about him helping Norris to the title.
“I’m pretty happy. It has been a while since I’ve been on P1,” said Piastri, whose last sprint pole was at the Belgian Grand Prix in July and who was last on any pole in the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort a month later.
“It almost went horribly wrong at turn four,” he reflected. “Turning left in a right-hand corner is never a good thing. I lost two-tenths. I thought that lap was over, but I kept pushing and was able to find some more time.
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“It is only the sprint, but I’ll take what I can get. The pace was there all day, and hopefully we can keep that going.”
Norris can lift the title this weekend in the penultimate race of the year if results go his way, but Piastri demonstrated he’s not about to give up the fight quite yet as he beat his teammate by 0.230 seconds.
If he can win the sprint race – which he did for his first ever F1 success on the same circuit in 2023 and repeated the dose last year – Piastri could grab a maximum eight points and reduce the deficit to Norris before Saturday evening’s qualifying for the main race.
Verstappen was moaning all day about his Red Bull, and the man who won brilliantly in Las Vegas at the weekend even finished behind fifth-placed teammate Yuki Tsunoda, while Aston Martin’s evergreen Fernando Alonso was fourth.
Lewis Hamilton’s miserable time at Ferrari continued as he was knocked out in Q1 in 18th. The unhappy seven-time champion complained his car “couldn’t go any quicker” and, when asked if there were any positives he could take from the weekend, added: “The weather’s nice.”
Earlier in the day, Piastri had set out his stall with the fastest lap of 1:20.924 in practice, ahead of Norris by 0.058sec.
AAP
