Norris owns risky call that backfired in Baku: “I kind of look like the loser”
Lando Norris didn’t point fingers after a scrappy, red‑flag-strewn Azerbaijan GP qualifying unraveled around him. He didn’t have to. The McLaren driver held his hands up and said the final roll of the dice in Q3 was his — and it went the wrong way.
With just over three minutes left on the clock after yet another stoppage in Baku, Norris chose to be the first car out for the last run. The logic was sound enough: bank a clean lap before someone else trips a yellow or red and ruins it for everyone. Trouble was, the breeze and a light spit of rain were still playing games, and the track was evolving by the second. Those who waited got the better of it. Those who didn’t… didn’t.
“I think it was a mistake from my side, from our side, to go out the pit lane first,” Norris told Sky Sports after qualifying seventh. “If there was a yellow flag further back, or a red, we would have looked like the heroes and everyone else would have looked like losers. Now I kind of look like the loser and them heroes, but it’s the price you pay sometimes around here.”
The session had already turned into a marathon. Cooler temperatures, gusty wind and fresh tyre compounds conspired to keep everyone on their toes, and by Q3 the timing sheets were a hostage to fortune. Oscar Piastri triggered the sixth red flag of the day, knocking his McLaren out of contention and teeing up a final shootout that became as much about timing as speed. At that point Carlos Sainz sat on a provisional pole that felt vulnerable.
Max Verstappen and Norris were the obvious threats to Sainz’s lap — and they took opposite routes to it. Verstappen played chicken with the clock and rolled last out of the pit lane. Norris led the train. The contrast could hardly have been sharper when the flag fell: Verstappen punched in a lap good enough for pole by four tenths; Norris was left P7.
“It was my call to go first,” Norris confirmed to print media. “Tricky conditions… it was just the wrong decision to make. In the end, if everyone else got a yellow behind because someone went off behind me, you wouldn’t be asking me this question. Sometimes it goes your way around here, sometimes it doesn’t.
“We thought we took the better option. I think it would have been if it wasn’t spitting; it just started to spit again before the final run, and then going out first is just the incorrect thing, so something to learn from. The opportunity’s there every single weekend to be on pole. I try and do that every weekend, and today I struggled more because of not making the best decision. But that’s a hindsight thing, not an incorrect one at the time.”
There’s championship weight hanging off days like this. Norris trails his teammate Piastri by 31 points in the standings, and with the Australian compromised by that late red flag, this looked a free swing to reel him in. As it stands, Norris will only start two places ahead — hardly a slam dunk for a big points swing at a circuit that tends to deal in chaos, not order.
“I did everything I could,” Norris said when asked if he’d squandered a chance to turn the tide. “If I won every race, I could be world champion by now, but I didn’t.”
The subtext here is interesting. McLaren have been comfortable letting their drivers call the queue and manage their own last-run priorities at times this season. In Baku, that autonomy met a street circuit’s brutal fine margins. There’s no grand drama in the debrief — Norris isn’t after one — but don’t be surprised if the team spends a little more time gaming the release order the next time a session turns into a red‑flag relay.
As for Sunday, Norris wasn’t dressing it up. Verstappen looks quick on the straights and settled in the braking zones — an ominous combo in Baku — and there’s the usual minefield of Safety Cars, restarts and wind shifts to factor in.
“We’ll be trying to get on the podium,” Norris said. He’ll need a clean launch, a slice of Baku luck and the kind of race craft we’ve seen from him all year. From seventh on this grid, that’s not an outlandish ask. Around these walls, it’s the sensible one.
