LAS VEGAS, USA, Nov 21 – Championship leader Lando Norris said he would be “fighting for pole” in qualifying at the Las Vegas Grand Prix after setting the pace in practice on the first day of action.
In a session interrupted and then curtailed by a suspected loose manhole cover, the McLaren driver was 0.029 seconds ahead of Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli, with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc third, 0.161secs off the pace.
Norris’ team-mate and title rival Oscar Piastri was 14th and 0.891secs off Norris, but that was not representative as the Australian did not get a clean run on the soft tyres because of the red flag for the track problems.
Norris is 24 points ahead of Piastri with three races to go and can put himself on the brink of the title with a strong result this weekend.
The Briton, whose team struggled in Las Vegas last year, said: “Always tricky here. We have a better feeling in the car than what we had last year and that was felt already in lap one of today.
“Some good feelings. Of course not a lot of running, not really any high-fuel running, but the pace is clearly there.
“It’s pretty tight between a lot of people and many people didn’t get their laps in.”
Qualifying for the grand prix is at 04:00 GMT on Saturday (20:00 Friday in Las Vegas).
Track officials investigate issues
Piastri was one of a number of top drivers who did not set representative times on the soft tyre owing to the interruptions, along with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, Mercedes’ George Russell and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton.
Piastri was two places behind Norris in the first session, where the McLarens finished sixth and eighth, and 0.192secs adrift for pace, continuing the trend of recent races.
But the Australian, who has not beaten Norris since he won the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August, said: “I feel OK. P1 was pretty good. Some things to work on but overall I felt like it was a pretty good session.
“But P2 I did two laps the whole session, so difficult to know exactly where we sit. Clearly the car’s got decent pace.”
The problem with the manhole cover emerged at Turn 17, the final corner, about 20 minutes before the end of the session.
Governing body the FIA said a marshal had seen “a possible loose manhole cover”, so the session was stopped.
The site was inspected and the session restarted after a 15-minute delay, with the FIA saying it believed the cover was “in a suitable condition to resume the session”.
But officials who had stayed at the location to monitor the situation saw the cover moving as cars passed over it when the session resumed and the red flag was thrown again.
The problem revived memories of the first Las Vegas race in 2023, when Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari was wrecked by a loose manhole cover, the problem was found to be repeated around the track, and practice did not finish until 04:00.
However, further investigation following the session was said by sources to have found there to be no problem with the manhole, which was bolted tight.
The FIA is yet to provide a further update.
And the scheduled qualifying session for the female-only F1 Academy feeder series ran as scheduled afterwards.
