Macau GP: Norris takes provisional pole

The 18-year-old Briton, who only arrived in Macau on Wednesday evening after hot-footing it from Brazil following his cancelled F1 test, put in two laps with his Carlin Dallara-Volkswagen that were considerably quicker than the best anyone else could manage.

Norris set purple times in the challenging mountain sector that were almost a second ahead of the opposition, but admitted that much of his advantage was created by taking on two new tyres – in common with most of his team-mates – at the third red-flag stoppage of a chaotic session.

Most of the leading runners have been keeping their powder dry on tyres, with 14 Yokohamas allocated to each car for the weekend, and the Japanese rubber proving quite high on degradation, so most stayed on their set from free practice.

"My driving was a bit affected by the graining, so I was setting myself a false limit," said Norris, "but on new tyres it was quite a big jump.

"It's a bit hard to know what our pace is compared to the others – when the time comes for four new that'll be the first time we see the real pace of everyone. So I'm happy with qualifying, but I can't be too happy yet."

Pedro Piquet was another to fit new tyres at the third red flag, and he took second position with his Van Amersfoort Racing car.

Even so, Piquet was also second best on old rubber, and at the time of that stoppage he was behind only Maximilian Gunther.

Gunther was happy to bounce back from his technical problem in free practice to take third fastest in his Prema Powerteam car, the German driving spectacularly and topping those who stayed on old rubber.

Formula Renault Eurocup race winner Dan Ticktum was a superb fourth for Motopark, the Red Bull junior and teammate Joel Eriksson (fifth fastest) suffering because they were relatively light on fuel, so joined the track late after the third stoppage.

When Jehan Daruvala smacked the barriers at San Francisco Bend, that caused a fourth and final red flag – with less than two minutes remaining on the clock – meaning Ticktum and Eriksson had not yet completed a flying lap in the final part of the session.

Macau GP veteran Yuhi Sekiguchi was an impressive sixth for B-Max Racing, the Super Formula star heading Prema's Callum Ilott.

Ilott was another to join the track late at the end – in his case he had a few minor problems that needed tweaking – and said: "I only did three laps – can't everyone keep it on the track for two laps?"

Formula Renault Eurocup champion Sacha Fenestraz was a strong eighth for Carlin, from free practice pacesetter Sergio Sette Camara, whose crash at Fishermen's Bend caused the third red flag and a delay of almost an hour while barriers were repaired.

Prema's Ferrari junior Guan Yu Zhou rounded out the top 10.

The other red flags were caused by 'Dragon' and Alex Palou, the Spaniard crashing and coming to rest on Faraway Hill.

Qualifying results:

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	Lando Norris	Carlin	2m11.570s	-
2	Pedro Piquet	Van Amersfoort Racing	2m12.482s	0.912s
3	Maximilian Gunther	Theodore Racing by Prema	2m12.619s	1.049s
4	Dan Ticktum	Motopark	2m13.317s	1.747s
5	Joel Eriksson	Motopark	2m13.637s	2.067s
6	Yuhi Sekiguchi	B-MAX Racing Team	2m13.683s	2.113s
7	Callum Ilott	Theodore Racing by Prema	2m13.739s	2.169s
8	Sacha Fenestraz	Carlin	2m13.818s	2.248s
9	Sergio Sette Camara	Motopark	2m13.884s	2.314s
10	Guan Yu Zhou	Theodore Racing by Prema	2m14.055s	2.485s
11	Kenta Yamashita	B-MAX Racing Team	2m14.281s	2.711s
12	Ralf Aron	Van Amersfoort Racing	2m14.347s	2.777s
13	Mick Schumacher	Theodore Racing by Prema	2m14.608s	3.038s
14	Tadasuke Makino	Motopark	2m14.670s	3.100s
15	Ferdinand Habsburg	Carlin	2m14.688s	3.118s
16	Jehan Daruvala	Carlin	2m14.868s	3.298s
17	Sho Tsuboi	TOM'S	2m15.085s	3.515s
18	Marino Sato	Motopark	2m15.416s	3.846s
19	Devlin Defrancesco	Carlin	2m15.977s	4.407s
20	Ritomo Miyata	TOM'S	2m17.482s	5.912s
21	Alex Palou	ThreeBond Racing	2m17.992s	6.422s
22	Dragon	B-MAX Racing Team	-	-