Norris bests Antonelli & Verstappen for first ever pole at Madring with stunning final flier: Ferrari fade after strong start to Q3

With the drivers facing the always challenging task of finding the maximum amount of seed possible without binning the car in range barriers at a new street circuit, it was McLaren’s Lando Norris who mastered the maiden Qualifying session at the debut of the Madring on Saturday. The reigning World Champion stunned the field by putting in a final flying lap in the tight and high speed confines here just outside of Madrid proper that relegated the seemingly untouchable Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli into second place on the grid for Sunday’s race. McLaren have definitely looked better as the season has worn on and Norris will enter Sunday’s GP with a “why not me?” mindset as he looks to make it three wins from the last four races. But of course, Antonelli will be stoked after his epic win in Italy a week ago after starting from P17. In that context and the context of his spectacular 20026 season, does a conversion from P2 to victory really sound all that difficult for the current points leader? Red Bull’s Max Verstappen has also been rapid lately on all sorts of circuits and the Dutch Master slotted into P3 with a fine final effort, knocking the Ferraris of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc back to P4 and P5 respectively. The second Mercedes of George Russell could do no better than P6, while the second McLaren of Oscar Piastri also lagged his teammate by some margin in P7.

Top 10 qualifiers for the Spanish GP:

Complete qualifying results available via Formula1.com.

Tomorrow’s race airs live beginning at 9AM Eastern on AppleTV here in the States. Hope to see you then to find out how it all shakes out at what is almost certain to be a highly unpredictable and potentially incident-packed race at the brand new Madring!