The Australian qualified seventh, one place behind Norris, as McLaren found itself behind Ferrari, Mercedes and Max Verstappen in the fight at the front.
Lewis Hamilton took sprint pole by just 0.011s from Kimi Antonelli, while Verstappen and Charles Leclerc completed the second row ahead of George Russell.
Norris and Piastri were next for McLaren, with the pair split by less than a tenth but unable to challenge the top five.
For Piastri, it continued a frustrating qualifying trend, marking the fourth straight qualifying session across both sprint and grand prix formats in which he has ended up seventh.
It was also the fourth time in four sprint qualifying sessions this year that he has been outqualified by Norris.
Piastri said the result was not a major surprise after McLaren’s pace in practice earlier in the day.
“I think after practice we looked pretty slow, so it’s about where we thought we’d be,” Piastri said.
“I think to be honest probably closer to that next pack behind Kimi and Lewis. So yeah, a tricky day to be honest. But we’ll try and improve for tomorrow.”
The Melburnian said the car had improved between practice and sprint qualifying, but not enough to put McLaren in contention with the leading group.
“It improved a bit, definitely. But not as much as we need unfortunately,” he said.
“I felt like I’ve really been on it today, and we’ve just not had the pace. So a bit of a shame.
“But we’ll try again tomorrow.”
View this post on Instagram
Norris also endured a difficult session after suffering front brake duct damage during SQ1, which left McLaren scrambling to repair his car through sprint qualifying.
The reigning world champion only scraped through SQ2 by eight hundredths of a second ahead of Pierre Gasly, before recovering to sixth in the final segment.
Norris said the issue had a bigger impact than he first expected, with the car only feeling closer to normal again for his final run in SQ3.
“It was. Yeah. Actually a lot more than than I thought. Because only the final run we managed to fix it,” Norris said when asked if the damage had affected his running in the session.
“The guys did a good job on fixing it for the final run. But the car was just completely different and way better again.
“It felt pretty shocking for most of it. And yeah, just lucky that we managed to fix it because it felt like a completely different car.
“But by the time I got the feeling for the final lap, I felt like I could have just pushed way more. So just unfortunate today.
“But I think also the pace was still there or thereabouts.”
Norris said McLaren may be able to race Verstappen in the sprint, but admitted Russell’s Mercedes appeared harder to catch.
“We’ll try but I mean the cars we’re around, I think maybe the Red Bull we can potentially compete against,” Norris said.
“But the Mercedes of George is clearly just a lot quicker. So to fight a much quicker car like that is going to be difficult.
“But you never know. I felt happier at the end. I just need to understand a few things and see what we can improve into tomorrow.”
The British Grand Prix Sprint gets underway at 12pm local time on Saturday (9pm AEST).
Discussion about this post