Lando Norris sets his race target after Oscar Piastri wins pole in Bahrain

One of McLaren's drivers, Oscar Piastri, will be starting in first place for the race in Bahrain on Sunday, April 13, while his teammate, Lando Norris, will start in sixth place. The latter spoke after the qualifying session, highlighting his plan to score a second-place finish because he believes that his teammate is going to be the most dominant driver on the field. Currently, Norris leads the championship standings while Piastri sits in third place.

The sixth-place McLaren driver spoke honestly about his chances at the Bahrain International Circuit, stating that his hopes remain in achieving a podium finish, while stating his belief that Piastri would be out-lapping the rest of the grid.

"I don't think I'll win tomorrow. I think, to try and aim for the podium will be the best chance. I think Oscar will lap everyone, so I'll try to get to get to second I guess."

To achieve his goals of second place behind Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris also highlighted the kind of racing that would be possible at the Sakhir track, explaining that it would be different than last weekend's Japanese Grand Prix that saw most of the top 10 grid remain the same from the start to the end of the race, causing the event to lack excitement.

"But it's a track you can overtake, unlike Japan, it's a track where you can overtake, you can do strategy, there's big undercuts and I mean, like three-four seconds a lap of undercut, so we'll see what we can do."

After winning the season-opener in Australia, and then crossing the finish line to take second place at the Chinese and Japanese Grands Prix, as well as scoring an eighth-place finish at the sprint race in Shanghai, Lando Norris has secured 62 points and currently leads this year's drivers' championship.

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McLaren sharesa motivating message for Lando Norris ahead of the race in Bahrain

After his P6 qualifying position, which will be his lowest start of the season so far, Lando Norris got some words of encouragement from his team on social media. McLaren F1 took to its X (formerly Twitter) account to share a positive message about its driver, indicating that the team would be working on the issues from today's qualifying that resulted in his lowest qualifying position, and will be coming back with renewed enthusiasm for the main race.

"Putting in the work tonight to come back stronger tomorrow 💪"

While Norris starts in sixth place, he is ahead of Red Bull Racing's Max Verstappen, who is his closest championship rival. The Dutchman will be beginning tomorrow's Grand Prix in seventh place, with the gap between the two drivers in qualifying being 0.156 seconds.

Currently Verstappen and Lando Norris have one point between them in the battle for the drivers' championship title.