Norris concedes it’s ‘impossible to know’ if P3 was his maximum in Canada Qualifying

Lando Norris believes that it’s “impossible to know” whether he could have delivered more in Qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix after he came within 0.151s of securing pole position.

Building on the momentum from his double podium finish in Miami, the McLaren driver improved from P3 to P2 in the Canada Sprint by passing Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli during his tense battle with eventual winner George Russell.

Norris continued his strong form in Qualifying and was a contender for the top spot throughout, making the most of McLaren’s latest upgrade package, but lost out in the final moments as Russell and Antonelli both improved their lap times.

Asked whether there was anything left on the table during the session, he responded: “It’s always impossible to know. I feel like we did a good job out there today honestly. I’m sure everyone can say around here, it’s a difficult lap, it’s a difficult track to kind of put everything together perfectly, but I think we did another good job.

“It’s clear that these guys are just that little bit quicker. It’s nice to be closer than we were yesterday. I had fun this morning, of course the weather’s going to be different tomorrow so we’ll wait and see. But we’re in a good place and we’re in a place we need to be.”

He will be joined on the second row by his team mate Oscar Piastri, who similarly matched his Sprint Qualifying result as the Woking-based outfit continued to find small improvements in relation to Mercedes.

The Australian concluded that the session “wasn’t bad” for the team, but echoed Norris’ sentiments about still finding themselves not quite on the same level as the Silver Arrows.

He said: “I think [it was] just a little bit tricky in a few areas, but overall I was pretty happy. We got closer to Mercedes but not quite enough. We tried our best. I think we’re definitely able to put a bit more pressure on but they’ve still got the ultimate pace over us.”

Prompted to look ahead to the race and the potential of rain, he added: “We’ll wait and see. We’ve not really driven these cars properly in the rain so it’s going to be an experience one way or another.”