Italian GP qualifying: Norris survives Monza scare to land front row as Verstappen snatches pole
Lando Norris called it “impressive” that he managed to do “such a bad job” for most of qualifying — and still end up on the front row. That was the mood after a wobbly Saturday at Monza where the McLaren driver flirted with a Q2 exit, found rhythm when it mattered, and finally parked it alongside Max Verstappen for Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix.
It didn’t look like that in the middle of it. Norris’s second segment was scruffy: first flier compromised after clattering the kerbs and slicing a chicane, a quick trip to the pits, then a banker that left him exposed as times tumbled. When the session tightened, he was on the wrong side of the cut. He’d already started one last lap, though, and he squeezed just enough out of it to scrape through — by inches, not miles.
Q3 swung the other way. Norris laid down a lap that briefly topped the sheets. Verstappen, who’d been quietly efficient all afternoon, arrived seconds later to shade it and seal pole. The final gap won’t make good reading for McLaren’s debrief, but the story of Norris’s day is how he got there.
“I’ll say no,” Norris replied when asked if he thought he’d done enough in Q3 to take pole. “It was a pretty bad qualifying from my behalf. I think it was the best lap I did in quali by, like, six tenths or something — so, impressive that I managed to improve so much. Or, probably impressive that I did such a bad job prior to that.”
The Briton didn’t sugarcoat the messiness. He talked about “hitting every kerb possible that I don’t want to hit,” locking up in places he shouldn’t, and struggling to click into the rhythm that typically makes Monza look simple. “It’s not that I’ve not been in the rhythm this weekend,” he said, “but I just couldn’t click back into it come quali until the final lap. But that’s also the only lap I needed to do it.”
The other story was the tow game. Monza qualifying is a rolling chess match of who blinks first in the pit lane, who takes the air, and who gets the slingshot. Norris knew before the session he’d be the one breaking the seal.
“Everyone’s waiting for us to go out first,” he said. “I knew I was going to have to go out of the pit lane first, and that was always going to be the expectation. It’s a tough one, because you know it’s never going to be a pole lap, especially with our straight-line speed, which is quite a long way down on pretty much everyone. It’s impossible to even set a competitive lap.”
That’s the trade-off at Monza in 2025: trim enough wing and you’re a rocket down the Rettifilo; carry a bit more and you’re happier in the Lesmos but begging for a tow to even the books. “In Q3 run two, I knew I had a slipstream,” Norris added, “but it’s hard to know just how much the slipstream is going to help me.”
His survival lap in Q2, after a lock-up into Turn 1, was one of those Monza specials where a tenth can be the difference between headlines and heartache. “I wasn’t the most comfortable I’ve ever been, just because I wasn’t in that rhythm,” he said. “My first lap was pretty bad. It was just so close — I think I improved almost a tenth, but it gained me like six positions. Shows how such a small amount of lap time can help.”
Norris also suggested McLaren wasn’t quite as on top of things at Monza as it has been elsewhere this year. From first practice, he said, the team felt a step behind the standard it’s set. Not miles off — just enough to make a pole attack at this place a knife-edge affair.
And on the other side of the garage? Red Bull looks sharper here than many expected. Norris admitted they’ve “improved a lot from last year,” and the Friday long runs had Verstappen and McLaren in the same postcode. “We probably didn’t expect the Red Bull to be quite as good,” he said, “but as soon as we did the first few runs, it was clear that they made some good steps. We’ll see. [Max’s] race pace was good on Friday. It wasn’t too dissimilar to ours. So time will tell.”
It sets up an intriguing Sunday. Norris starts on the clean side with a car that’s typically kinder on tyres than it looks and a driver who, by his own account, left plenty on the table in qualifying. Verstappen’s Red Bull, meanwhile, has that straight-line authority that makes life much easier when you’re the one dictating the braking points. First corner etiquette at Monza will do the rest.
Norris, at least, has given himself the chance to make it count after a session that could’ve ended with an early walk back to the garage. He’ll take the “impressive” bit — just not for the reasons he cracked about on Saturday night.
