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When the results of the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix are glanced at in the future, it’s likely only Max Verstappen’s win and George Russell’s improbable second place on the grid will stand out in terms of driver performance. But there was someone else who came close to taking a breakthrough grand prix win.
Lando Norris set the pace in both Q1 and Q2 and headed into the top-10 shootout knowing he had every chance of turning that prodigious pace in these conditions into his first pole position. And had he achieved that, circumstances would have turned it into a maiden grand prix victory.
But instead, as he turned right after taking the left at Eau Rouge, the rear of Norris’s McLaren stepped out. In correcting, the car snapped and spun the other way, sending him heavily into the barriers – thankfully without injury. But what would have happened had Norris been able to catch that moment without the spin, or Q3 not been started in unsuitable conditions?
Firstly, we should note it’s self-evident that the answer to the question of whether Norris would have taken pole is ‘no’ given he had a chance and did crash. Regardless of the conditions, as the driver he has to be considered responsible for that.
As Norris himself admitted, he was “pushing a bit too much for the weather at that point”.
But setting that aside, could he really have beaten Max Verstappen, who produced a superb lap to take pole position? There’s no way to answer that definitively, but Norris certainly felt it was possible.
“The car was on fire and Q1 and Q2 were extremely good,” he said. “I think I could quite easily have fought for pole position.”
Given the variable conditions, there are several factors that support Norris’s case. Firstly, he was fastest in the first two segments of qualifying, albeit with the caveat that these sessions are all about progressing rather than necessarily setting the quickest time. But he was extremely confident in the challenging conditions.
Secondly, team-mate Daniel Ricciardo didn’t look anything like as quick as Norris had done in Q1 and Q2 but ended up fourth, 1.099s off Verstappen. It’s a crude measure, but given Norris had been 1.1s quicker than Ricciardo in Q2, and far more than that in Q1, it suggests it was valid.
Ultimately, it would all have come down to his sensitivity and judgement of conditions in Q3, combined with how well he dealt with the pressure of knowing he had a shot at pole position.
You could argue his crash showed that he didn’t deal with that very well, and perhaps being a little too over-eager did contribute to that, but given the universal criticism of the conditions from the drivers, it’s difficult to consider that as emphatic evidence. But Norris did look in control behind the wheel, until the crash that is.
Could he have got pole position? Unquestionably, yes. Would he have done? There’s no answer to that. But if he had done, he would have become a grand prix winner on Sunday.
How he would have felt about that is another question and you can imagine he would have been ambivalent. It would have been a landmark moment for him and brought valuable points to McLaren – as well as ending the team’s win drought that stretches all the way back to Jenson Button’s win in the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix.
But it wouldn’t have been the true first grand prix victory experience. As Norris himself said after finishing the ‘race’ 14th, echoing the thoughts of many drivers, this wasn’t a race worth of points. But as Norris also admitted, “maybe I’ll be saying the opposite if I was first and got a good amount of points”.
Setting aside the unprovable hypotheticals of whether he really could have taken pole position and won, what we can be more confident of is that Norris’ will win one day.
He’s performed superbly this season, with the qualifying crash at Spa the only hugely significant mistake he has made. McLaren is on the up, he has a long-term deal to remain as a key part of the team and he’s proved beyond doubt that he will be able to win races given the opportunity.
And while he would doubtless have taken the victory if it was offered, just as Verstappen rightly did having earned the chance to benefit from the unique circumstances of this non-race, it perhaps wouldn’t have been the right way to take a first grand prix victory.
In many ways, George Russell was in the ideal situation – he earned his first podium finish to reward not just himself, but also Williams, for the years of toil with a brilliant qualifying performance – but was one place short of P1. The Belgian Grand Prix was a race unworthy of the title and such a breakthrough triumph.
Norris’s time will come, and so will what might be termed ‘new-look’ McLaren’s. But how close they came at Spa shouldn’t be forgotten.
