Uncovered: The truth behind Norris’ pole and Piastri’s P4 in Brazil

The first half of the Brazilian GP race weekend has gone almost perfectly for Lando Norris, who was once again the faster side of McLaren F1 team in qualifying.

At a crucial point in the championship battle, the Briton is driving better than ever, while problems for Oscar Piastri continue to grow. What went wrong for the Australian in qualifying, and how did his team-mate snatch pole position? Telemetry data gives us the answers.

Why is Piastri struggling at McLaren?

As the first race weekend since the start of the season in which Norris entered as championship leader, the Brazilian Grand Prix represents a very important stop in the calendar. So far, it seems that things could hardly have gone better for Norris, who secured both the Sprint race victory and pole position for the main event.

Even more significant was Piastri’s mistake in the Sprint, where he lost control of the car in tricky conditions and retired early, allowing Norris to further extend his points advantage.

All this placed even greater pressure on Piastri, who failed to take advantage of his first opportunity to respond.

From the very beginning of the weekend — and from the start of qualifying — Norris appeared the more stable of the two drivers. He topped both Q1 and Q2 sessions, with the gap to his teammate being far from minimal.

However, Norris made his first mistake during his opening flying lap in Q3.

At the entry to Turn 1, the Briton locked his front-right tyre, significantly compromising his passage through the Senna S. This mistake cost him around nine-tenths of a second, and the data clearly shows the difference in speed through Turns 1 and 2.

But this was not his only error. Through Turn 7, Norris also had a worse line compared to Piastri, resulting in a smaller apex speed and another loss of time.

Piastri capitalised on these mistakes and found himself on provisional pole after the first runs in Q3. It was the first time all weekend that the pressure had suddenly shifted to Norris’s side of the garage — pressure which he later described as “unnecessary” after qualifying.

Fortunately for him, that pressure didn’t unsettle him. In his second flying lap, he delivered a truly fantastic performance and, at a moment when most drivers were struggling to improve their times, secured the 15th pole position of his career.

On the other side of the garage, Piastri became the one making mistakes, which ultimately left him P4 on the grid — behind Charles Leclerc and Kimi Antonelli.

The Australian’s first error came in Turn 1, where he went too wide, which affected his run through Turns 2 and 3 and reduced his top speed in the second DRS zone. From the data, we can see that this was the main reason Norris was faster on the straight — a mistake that cost Piastri roughly two-tenths of a second. Not an ideal start to a lap when fighting for pole position.

Piastri then made another error, this time on the exit of Turn 9, where he lost rear grip under acceleration, resulting in a small oversteer moment. By this point, the time gap was already too large, and the short lap in São Paulo leaves little room to recover from mistakes.

It’s worth highlighting that Norris has been consistently faster all weekend in the middle sector, which is filled with technically demanding corners. In fact, these very sections of the track also determined the pecking order between the McLaren drivers in the sprint qualifying session.

Just like in Mexico the week before, Lando once again demonstrated his superiority in slow, technical corners, where front-end stability on entry and rear-end balance on exit are crucial.

Without these mistakes, Piastri would certainly have been in the fight for pole, and a front-row start would have been almost guaranteed. Interestingly, Oscar’s ideal qualifying lap was only 0.082 seconds faster than his actual one — a very small difference.

In other words, this shows that Piastri’s biggest issue wasn’t raw speed, but rather a lack of confidence in the car when conditions were changing and when it was difficult to know exactly where the grip limit was.

Adding to his misfortune, both Leclerc and Antonelli showed strong pace, which pushed him down to P4. More importantly for Piastri, these two drivers will likely influence his race result on Sunday as well.

Nevertheless, McLaren’s race pace should be stronger if the main race takes place in dry conditions, and the Interlagos circuit is known for offering better overtaking opportunities than most.

It remains to be seen how many positions Piastri can recover — and whether he might even challenge Norris for the win.

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