Norris drops to eighth after Turn 19 track-limits deletion
NXTbets Pro | Published On: October 25, 2026
Norris after deletion
Norris qualified eighth after officials deleted his final Q3 lap for exceeding track limits at Turn 19, a call that pushed him from sixth to eighth on the grid and cut short what looked like a better result. He said the McLaren felt the best it had all weekend, but he still left qualifying unhappy because the lap did not count and the session did not deliver the position he believed the car had earned. He criticized his own qualifying performance after the deletion and said the car remained difficult to handle, especially in the slow-speed sections and sector three. That made the loss harder to swallow, because Norris also believed McLaren had the pace for a front-row start. The speed was there in stretches, but the deleted lap denied him the chance to convert it into the front-row result he believed was possible.
McLaren finds gains
That result followed a Friday in Austin that already showed how much McLaren had to manage. Norris said the car was very difficult to drive after practice, and the timing sheet backed up the struggle. He finished seventh in FP2, 1.082 seconds behind Charles Leclerc, while Oscar Piastri ended the session eighth. Both McLaren cars ran behind Liam Lawson’s Racing Bulls car in that session, a reminder that the team still had work to do even with revised parts on the car. McLaren chief technical officer Rob Marshall said the team’s revised front and rear corner and diffuser package delivered a measurable aerodynamic gain, but that improvement did not solve the handling issues the drivers felt. The update gave McLaren a step forward, yet the drivers still described a car that asked too much of them in key parts of the lap. Norris’s comments fit that picture. He had speed to show in practice, but not enough control to make the package easy to attack with confidence. The team found a gain. It just did not turn into a clean answer to the balance problems that kept surfacing.
Piastri qualifies seventh
Piastri carried the same McLaren theme into qualifying and lined up seventh in the McLaren MCL40 after saying the team had tried several changes without finding a fix for its handling problems. His comments matched Norris’s view that the car could be quick and still be hard to live with over a full lap. That recovery was only partial. Piastri’s qualifying result showed McLaren could still stay in the fight, but the team remained short of the balance it wanted. Up front, Kimi Antonelli took pole position ahead of Max Verstappen, setting the benchmark for the session while McLaren dealt with its own issues further down the order. The picture for the team was clear across practice and qualifying. It had enough pace to stay relevant. It did not have a car that gave either driver the confidence to put together a clean run without compromise.
