Lando Norris could not find the "magical" lap he felt was possible during a difficult qualifying session at the Singapore Grand Prix, describing a balancing act so delicate that any deviation from the limit left him "finished".
Norris qualified fifth at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, with McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri down in seventh.
The Australian will, however, start sixth after George Russell's grid penalty, which was triggered by Mercedes exceeding Russell's permitted power unit component allocation.
The session capped a difficult weekend for McLaren, whose MCL40 proved sensitive over Marina Bay's bumps throughout the compressed sprint format.
Norris and Piastri had already endured a costly collision in Saturday's sprint, when Norris attempted a move on his team-mate at Turn 5.
Contact sent both cars into a spin, with Piastri hitting the barriers and retiring on the spot while Norris rejoined to finish eighth. Stewards later ruled it a racing incident, taking no action against either driver.
Reflecting on qualifying, Norris told media, including RacingNews365, that little had changed across the weekend.
"We just are where we have been all weekend; nothing's changed. We're not quick enough," he said.
"There were moments where I would do a good Sector 1 or a good Sector 2, but the car is just so difficult to drive; it's too difficult to drive. We came to a P5 and P7..."
Norris' precarious tightrope walk
The Briton sensed a stronger lap was within reach, but the margin for error proved too narrow to exploit it.
"It felt like there was potential, and it felt like I could maybe put together some magical lap in Q3 if things just went my way," Norris explained.
"But it was just too tricky from a car perspective to be at this limit where if I push 101 per cent, I'm finished. If I push 99 per cent, I'm finished.
"So it's balancing it too much. And on a track like this, with the bumps and everything, it was just too difficult. So no reasons, no excuses. Just not quite good enough."
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