Ultimately the teams did no good in doing so, with the anomaly in the rules to be ironed out before the next sprint race in Austria.

McLaren could gain the advantage as Norris used up all of his softs in Friday’s FP1 and regular qualifying sessions. The rules state that on Saturday drivers can only use the new medium tyres, in SQ1 and SQ2, and then the new soft tyres, in SQ3.

McLaren opted to use all of Norris’ padding to help him finish seventh in Sunday’s Grand Prix, knowing he would have nowhere to run if he got into SQ3.

However, the anomaly in the rules is that while teams cannot use intermediate or full wet tires in practice sessions unless the track is declared wet – thus preventing them from using wet tires on setup laps etc – they can in Use them freely in ranked matches.

In normal dry qualifying the teams don’t usually gain any benefit from running intermediates or wets, so this has never been an issue. Nonetheless, the SQ3 shootout’s restriction to a new set of softs offered drivers the possibility of taking them to the track in dry conditions.

By staying in the garage, Norris knows he can take 10^day place. However, if any of the other drivers were unable to run due to technical issues or crashed without a set time on his first lap, Norris could have driven out and done a token lap in the middle, moving himself up to ninth in the process bit.

Had another driver, Yuki Tsunoda, entered SQ3 without any cushions, the two could have ended their race against each other for faster lap times.

Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri AT04

Photography: Mark Sutton/ motorsport pictures

It is understood a gray area of ​​wet tire use emerged in the discussions of the Sporting Advisory Committee that finalized the recent changes, but there was not enough time to cover all bases. It is expected to be resolved before the next sprint in Austria.

Norris, meanwhile, admitted it was frustrating when he was asked by Autosport if he had missed the progress of the race in SQ3: “Yeah, of course, because I love qualifying, probably more than any other time of the weekend. many.

“I love racing, but qualifying, just going all out, it’s the one time you really do it. Yeah, I think it’s really bad. You want to get a chance to go out and do a few laps and see what you can do. something.

“It might be rare, but you might be in SQ3 with no one out, because everyone used the tires in Q3. You might be in that position, so it might not look good on TV.

“Then the rules will change. But just because there’s a car or two in there, the rules probably won’t change.”