Norris' real opportunity after coming from nowhere with 'masterpiece' lap

It says everything about the remarkable lap with which Lando Norris took pole position for the Spanish Grand Prix that it was a toss-up as to which was the most important and impressive of two striking statistics.

Was it that Norris had improved by a stunning 0.701 seconds between his two laps in final qualifying, to come from nowhere to take a pole that had not looked to be a possibility to McLaren?

Or was it that in beating runaway championship leader Kimi Antonelli's Mercedes by 0.011 seconds, Norris had made a mistake at the final corner that cost him more than 0.3secs?

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella described Norris' performance as "a masterpiece" and "one of the most impressive laps that I witnessed as somebody that watches telemetry in 450 grands prix, because we were not honestly performing to the level of scoring pole position".

As Stella is someone who has worked with Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso, his comments carry weight.

Norris said: "Most tracks, you know what is perfect, what you really want to achieve in a perfect lap. A very good day is when you get pretty close to that.

"Until the last corner, I think I matched that perfection level in pretty much every corner.

"So, yeah, it's a dream to achieve a lap like that. So it was easily one of the best laps I've ever done.