Belgian GP: Lando Norris secures pole after Max Verstappen takes sprint-race honours

It will be all-McLaren front row in Sunday's race at Spa-Francorchamps with Piastri second, while reigning champion gives new Red Bull boss early success

McLaren driver Lando Norris celebrates clinching pole position at the Belgian Grand Prix. PA

It will be an all-McLaren front row in Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix after Lando Norris secured pole position ahead of teammate and championship leader Oscar Piastri.

British driver Norris is looking for a hat-trick of wins – having been victorious in the previous two races at Silverstone, in front of his home fans, and Austria – and goes into Sunday's GP nine points behind Piastri in the drivers' standings.

And Norris would pip Piastri by just 0.085 seconds at Spa-Francorchamps. Charles Leclerc's Ferrari is on the second row next to Max Verstappen's Red Bull after qualifying on Saturday, one position clear of Williams' Alex Albon, with George Russell sixth for Mercedes.

Norris qualified six tenths behind Piastri in Friday's qualifying but insisted: “I was confident after yesterday – 0.3 secs is just slipstream and not being first out of the pit lane. It was a decent lap, so I'm happy.”

Rain is forecast for Sunday's 44-lap race, and Norris continued: “I prefer it to stay dry. But I don't mind if it is wet, or dry, or somewhere in the middle. I just hope it is an exciting race.”

Piastri admitted the day had been “a bit disappointing” after the Australian had been bested by Norris again.

“The second lap was coming together really well but just made a little mistake into 14 and lost a lot of time,” he said. “The car was really good but it's fine margins out there.

“We're a good teammate pairing, we learn a lot from each other. Felt like I did OK but didn't quite execute when it matters.”

Lewis Hamilton's weekend took another nightmare twist after he qualified only 16th. The seven-time world champion, who started 18th and finished 15th in the sprint race, was eliminated in Q1 for Sunday's main event after his best lap was chalked off by the stewards.

The Briton thought he had done enough to haul his Ferrari into the next phase of qualifying when he posted the seventh best time. But moments later, his lap was deleted after he was adjudged to have run all four wheels of his Ferrari off the circuit. That dropped him way down the order.

Is everything OK?” Hamilton asked on the radio. “Track limits,” replied Hamilton's race engineer, Ricardo Adami.

“Am I out?” Hamilton replied. “Lap time is deleted, P16,” came the response.

There was no response from the 40-year-old who is left to reflect on another sobering result of his difficult start to life at Ferrari, calling his own performance “very poor”.

Hamilton, who spun in qualifying for the sprint, enters Sunday's race without a podium for Ferrari – the deepest he has gone into a season in his career without a top-three finish.

“I was the same as I was for the rest of the weekend, we made some changes and the car didn't feel terrible,: said Hamilton. “It was tough for us we had to even put our second set [of tyres] on just to get through Q1 so not great.

“From my side I made a mistake so I've got to look internal and I've got to apologise to my team because that is just unacceptable to be out in both Q1's. It's a very poor performance for myself.”

Earlier, Verstappen had welcomed new Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies to the race team by winning the sprint race in style after starting from second on the grid.

He held off the challenge of Piastri and Norris to earn Meckies an early success after replacing the sacked Christian Horner as team principal.

“Max was brilliant and all the guys did a great job,” said the former boss of Red Bull's 'B' team Racing Bulls. “He was under massive pressure and he made almost no mistakes and the team extracted everything from the car and the tyres.”