‘Disappointed’ Lando Norris in no mood to talk about crash

Lando Norris refused to answer a question about his crash in qualifying at the F1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

The F1 world championship leader suffered an early blow to his title hopes as he crashed out of qualifying, leaving him a lowly 10th on the grid for Sunday’s race in Jeddah.

On his first flying lap of Q3, Norris lost control of his McLaren over the kerb at Turn 5 and was sent sliding into a heavy impact with the wall.

A dejected Norris, who leads teammate Oscar Piastri by three points in the championship after four races, was not in the mood to talk about his costly mistake.

Asked about the incident during an interview with Sky Sports F1, Norris simply replied: “Nope. Move on.”

Norris went on to say: “I’m not putting my mind to tomorrow yet, just disappointed with today.

“I’ll now go see my engineers and look ahead to what we can do tomorrow. We know that the car is quick.”

Norris said he planned to apologise to his team for the accident, which caused extensive damage to the left-front of his McLaren.

“I’ll go see my engineers and apologise and then see what we can do for tomorrow and try and put a good plan in place,” he added.

Piastri starts second alongside Red Bull's Max Verstappen, who claimed a superb pole position. 

Lando Norris not expecting ‘magical’ recovery

Norris was quick to downplay his chances of staging a remarkable recovery drive on Sunday, citing how difficult overtaking is at the high-speed, narrow Jeddah street circuit.

“We’ll probably need a bit of luck. It’s so difficult - almost impossible - to overtake around here so I’m not expecting anything magical,” he said.

“We have a good car and if we can work our way up to the top five, six honestly I would be happy.

“Oscar wasn’t on pole so clearly our pace wasn’t that much better than Max, even George was not far away.

“To get close to them I think is not very realistic but top five is our target.”

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown backed Norris to come back stronger in the race.

"He said he was fine on the radio, but the car is a little bruised," Brown told Sky Sports F1.

"We will get that fixed, and then go again tomorrow.

"We will just focus on the race, it will probably be one-stop, but there is a high-likelihood of a safety car, so we will do our best and see if we can get him further up the grid - he'll certainly be faster than he qualified.”