Having had to evacuate from his McLaren team’s motorhome without even his shoes as smoke billowed from a fire in the structure on the morning of qualifying, Lando Norris proved by taking an exceptional pole position for the Spanish Grand Prix that he cannot be faulted in an ability to maintain a relentless focus under pressure both on track and off.
The British driver’s subsequent lap in Barcelona to deny Red Bull’s Max Verstappen by just-two hundredths of a second was, he believed, the best he had driven in the single lap discipline, an assertion it is impossible to argue with. Verstappen was fearsomely quick but on his final lap Norris hurled his car at the track, taking it to the very edge but nailing a line that edged him by a nose onto pole, no mean feat given Verstappen’s dominance in qualifying this season.
