McLaren's Lando Norris will start the Spanish GP from ninth position, after a somewhat subdued qualifying after which the British driver complained about a Q1 incident that he felt compromised his session. Norris had been on a hot flying lap when he encountered a group of cars in the final sector. All of them, apart from Haas' Nikita Mazepin, stayed out of his way and Norris's resulting slow final sector resulted in him not being fully secure to get through Q1. Needing to run another fresh set of softs to top the timesheets and ensure getting through to Q2, Norris was suitably miffed, but stopped short of pointing the finger at Mazepin entirely. "Everyone got out of my way apart from one person," Norris explained to media, including RacingNews365.com. "And yeah, I'm not gonna say names because it's unfair to do that. But yeah I lost a lot of time, like, half a second, six, seven tenths or something. So it kind of ruined my whole qualifying in a way. "It just made it a lot more difficult, a lot more tricky. So it definitely didn't help. And when the gaps are like quarter of a tenth between us in the top 10 and things like that, then one small mistake or just something that doesn't go right, you can pay a big price for it. And we did today. It's always tricky here. But was made extra tricky by one driver just staying right in front of me." Mazepin was given a penalty for the incident, as well as given a penalty point. Having only had one set of tyres left for the crucial Q3 run at the end, Norris said he felt he could have gone quicker had he had the opportunity of running fresh softs for another run. "I think we had more pace in the car today," rued the McLaren driver. "And yeah, it's just probably my worst session, my worst qualifying so far this year with one mistake really in Q3. I just went a bit wide over one of the kerbs and damaged a little bit the car but then didn't really improve on my second lap either. "So, bit of a shame, because there's definitely some more potential in the car and I was feeling good. I just didn't put it together. So it happens."
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