Lando Norris believes the "little kick" he received from race engineer Will Joseph during United States Grand Prix qualifying had a big impact on him delivering what proved to be the best lap of his F1 career.
Norris delivered a stunning lap in Q3 to beat F1 title rival Max Verstappen by 0.031s to secure his fourth pole position in the last five races, and the seventh of his career, aided by a late crash from Mercedes' George Russell that curtailed the second runs.
The McLaren driver, however, has conceded that going into Q3 he lacked confidence in his car. It took a few words from race engineer Will Joseph as Norris headed out on track to ease the mind.
"Trust the car," said Joseph. "Don't overload combined [turning and braking at the same time]. The lap time will come." And so it proved.
Norris conceded for Joseph to make such a comment was "a very rare thing". He added: "He knows I don't normally like that kind of stuff.
"It's just because I said after Q2 that I was just not confident at all in the car. It was bouncing everywhere, and I lacked confidence at that point to put a good lap together.
"I'd been struggling in Turn 1, struggling in Turn 12, but we were there or thereabouts, so it was more just, let's get a good lap in and be there. So that's what I did.
"Whether or not what I did was because of Will's comments, I'd probably say no, otherwise I'll boost his ego too much!
"But I probably needed it a little bit, just because I was struggling a lot with the car, and we've been a bit off this weekend. A little kick never hurts sometimes."
Norris facing tyre concerns?
The key issue for Norris and McLaren now is how the tyres will fare over the 56 laps of the grand prix.
During the 19-lap sprint, degrading medium rubber resulted in Norris losing second place to Ferrari's Carlos Sainz after a lock-up into Turn 1 on the final lap.
Both Sainz and team-mate Charles Leclerc looked particularly strong on their tyres, and with the Scuderia starting on the second row, they are in prime position to put Norris and Verstappen under considerable pressure throughout the race.
Asked as to his concern ahead of the grand prix about the tyre situation, he replied: "Quite a big one. I don't want to do it again [repeat what happened in the sprint], so we'll see.
"I don't think it was as bad as it was. I think certain events led to such a thing. We improved the car quite a bit. We were definitely not contending anywhere close to pole [on Friday].
"We're still a bit off but we're in a good position. Our pace relative to Max is a bit more similar. I probably expected the Ferraris and Mercedes to be a bit quicker.
"Maybe they got a bit more out of the car earlier on in the weekend, and we've been able to take a bigger step forward between the sprint and quali, so maybe we've caught up a bit.
"But it's going to be a tough race. Ferrari were very quick in the race [sprint] with their degradation, and Max is Max. I've always said that Max is Max, and he's going to be fast.
"So I'm excited. It's going to be a good battle, and probably a good one to watch."
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