Norris: I made too many mistakes, paid the price

What made matters worse for McLaren was that they had a really fast Formula 1 car around the Lusail International Circuit but failed to capitalize on that as both drivers couldn't keep the MCL60 within the track limits as Oscar Piastri also had his best lap deleted and will start the race on Sunday from sixth on the grid.

In the end, McLaren's drivers handed their top three positions on a silver platter to Mercedes George Russell and Lewis Hamilton.

Reflecting on qualifying in McLaren's Friday report, Norris said: "A disappointing day, I had a correction and oversteer, went off and the lap time was deleted.

"I should have been much higher up today. The pace of the car has been amazing, the team have done a great job. I made too many mistakes and paid the price.

"There are definitely opportunities to recover across the weekend, but right now I'm frustrated that I didn't get the job done in quali, which is to put in good laps.

"We'll work hard to prepare for the Sprint tomorrow and try and make up for it on Sunday," Norris concluded.

Piastri, who only got to know his lap was deleted after finishing his parc ferme interview, added: "P6. It's a bit of a shame to get my lap time deleted at the end.

"It makes life slightly trickier on Sunday, but the pace in the car was decent. It's a shame we both overstepped the mark a little bit on our laps. We'll try again tomorrow and hopefully we can do a bit better," the rookie added.

McLaren team boss Andrea Stella did not go into the blame game, as he summed up his team's below par qualifying in Qatar on Saturday.

"6th and 10th is a disappointing result as it doesn't reflect the potential of the car," he said. "Our pace today was, again, quite strong which in itself is encouraging.

"While it's a tough result to accept today, the weekend is quite long. We have a Sprint Shootout and a Sprint race to come and the race itself will be quite interesting from a tyre point of view. So, there are plenty of opportunities to recover and score good points.

"We now turn our attention to maximizing the Sprint tomorrow and the Grand Prix on Sunday," the Italian concluded.

McLaren are targeting to close the 49-gap to Aston Martin in the 2023 F1 Constructors' Championship in a bid to take fourth place from their rivals.