Norris: Just disappointed, I'll apologise to my engineers

The British driver lost control of his McLaren MCL39 through the Turn 4/5 chicane on his first flying lap in Q3, and subsequently damaged his car in the barriers.

Having failed to set a representative lap in the final part of Qualifying, Norris will start the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix from tenth on the grid.

Meanwhile, teammate Oscar Piastri will start on the front row of the grid alongside the Red Bull of Max Verstappen, the latter claiming pole position by just 0.010 seconds.

Mercedes' George Russell also impressed with P3, setting a lap just over a tenth of a second slower than that of Verstappen.

Currently leading the Drivers' Championship with 77 points, a lowly grid slot is exactly what Norris didn't need in his Title fight with Piastri and Verstappen, who are three and eight points behind in the Standings respectively.

In fact, Norris also faltered during the previous Grand Prix weekend in Bahrain, qualifying in a lowly sixth position and making a series of driving errors during the race to finish third behind Piastri and Russell.

The Jeddah Corniche Circuit is notoriously difficult to overtake on, and therefore Norris doesn't have high hopes for the race on Sunday.

Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after the session, Norris stated that his first port of call was to apologise to his engineers for damaging his MCL39. He said: "I've not put my mind to tomorrow yet, just disappointed with today.

"I know I have to look forward to tomorrow and I'll go now and see my engineers and look ahead to what we can do [in the race]," Norris added.

While Norris admits that McLaren still have the fastest overall package, he also believes that Red Bull and Mercedes have caught up around the streets of Jeddah.

He also conceded to the fact that overtaking will be difficult: "We know the car is good, we know the car is quick. We will try and put a good plan in place but tomorrow we're going to need a bit of luck, it's so difficult, it's almost impossible to overtake around here so I'm not expecting anything magical.

"But we have a good car, if we can work our way up to the top five or six I would say I'll be happy.

"Our pace was clearly not that much better than Max, even George is not that far away so I think to get close to them is not very realistic but to try and get to the top 5 is probably our target," concluded the McLaren driver.

How many places will Norris gain during the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix? The race commences Sunday 20 April at 18:00 BST (20:00 local time).