Lando Norris was surprised to learn he’d taken pole position for the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

“I messed up,” he told race engineer Will Joseph after taking the chequered flag in Q3. “No, that is pole,” Joseph reassured him.

Norris knew the timing of his final run had worked out well for him, as he completed his lap after Max Verstappen and therefore benefited from a drier circuit. But he also knew other drivers behind him could potentially gain even more.

He was faster than any of them through the first two sectors of his final lap. But he slipped up as he accelerated out of turn 16 and had to catch a huge snap of oversteer.

When told he’d got pole position, Norris asked: “Did no one else get a lap or what?” Joseph told him: “No, there was a yellow flag behind you as well.” Charles Leclerc’s error at turn 12 had taken him out of contention as well as Norris’s team mate Oscar Piastri.

Sector times

Norris stopped using the delta time display on his steering wheel during qualifying earlier in the season. But he would have felt the scale of his time loss at turn 16.

Having picked up three tenths of a second each in the first and second sectors, he gave away almost as much through the final sector. Verstappen gained two tenths of a second at that point on the lap: had Norris done the same he would have had pole position by eight tenths of a second instead of three.

Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase informed him Norris had taken pole position despite the error: “So Norris, pole, three tenths – he made a huge mistake as well at turn 16.”

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P. # Driver S1 S2 S3 Ultimate lap (deficit)
1 4 Lando Norris 30.430 (1) 36.842 (1) 40.384 (7) 1’47.656 (+0.278)
2 1 Max Verstappen 30.863 (6) 37.391 (2) 40.003 (4) 1’48.257
3 55 Carlos Sainz Jnr 30.894 (7) 37.608 (5) 39.794 (1) 1’48.296
4 81 Oscar Piastri 30.839 (4) 37.719 (6) 40.097 (6) 1’48.655 (+0.306)
5 63 George Russell 30.787 (2) 38.216 (7) 39.800 (2) 1’48.803
6 30 Liam Lawson 31.385 (9) 37.593 (4) 39.968 (3) 1’48.946 (+0.116)
7 6 Isack Hadjar 30.846 (5) 38.325 (9) 40.078 (5) 1’49.249 (+0.305)
8 14 Fernando Alonso 31.379 (8) 37.563 (3) 40.524 (8) 1’49.466
9 16 Charles Leclerc 30.789 (3) 38.239 (8) 40.781 (10) 1’49.809 (+0.063)
10 10 Pierre Gasly 31.827 (10) 38.721 (11) 40.693 (9) 1’51.241 (+0.299)
11 27 Nico Hulkenberg 32.224 (12) 38.502 (10) 41.300 (13) 1’52.026 (+0.755)
12 18 Lance Stroll 32.300 (13) 38.944 (12) 40.853 (11) 1’52.097 (+0.753)
13 31 Esteban Ocon 32.601 (16) 39.033 (14) 41.076 (12) 1’52.710 (+0.277)
14 43 Franco Colapinto 31.896 (11) 38.998 (13) 41.938 (15) 1’52.832 (+0.851)
15 87 Oliver Bearman 32.373 (15) 39.120 (15) 41.405 (14) 1’52.898 (+0.196)
16 23 Alexander Albon 32.318 (14) 39.564 (16) 42.503 (18) 1’54.385 (+1.835)
17 12 Andrea Kimi Antonelli 32.864 (17) 39.846 (17) 43.228 (20) 1’55.938 (+0.376)
18 5 Gabriel Bortoleto 33.719 (20) 39.977 (18) 42.978 (19) 1’56.674
19 22 Yuki Tsunoda 33.582 (19) 40.806 (19) 42.306 (16) 1’56.694 (+0.104)
20 44 Lewis Hamilton 33.579 (18) 40.886 (20) 42.363 (17) 1’56.828 (+0.287)

Teams’ performance

The wet conditions on Friday meant no one improved their lap times from the opening day of practice on Thursday, and thus make a poor basis for comparison. If tomorrow’s race is dry, it’s possible we will see the rare scenario that some drivers set their fastest laps of the weekend in the grand prix.

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Field performance

The track record for the Las Vegas Strip Circuit, which is hosting its third grand prix this weekend, probably would have fallen had Saturday been dry.

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