Lando Norris arrived at the Belgian GP with two consecutive race wins and hoped to continue this momentum, but had a major scare during qualifying for the sprint race. With the Briton having a hair-raising risk of being eliminated, his mother, Cisca Wauman, was in the McLaren garage and breathed a sigh of relief as her son managed to qualify for the next session, sparking a string of reactions from fans.

Norris has been in fine form of late and won the last two races. This has helped him cut down the deficit between him and Oscar Piastri from 22 points to eight points.

On the other hand, with the Belgian GP weekend being a sprint race weekend, the drivers have an extra opportunity to score points. Norris aimed to utilize this with a strong showing in the sprint race and was one of the favorites to secure the pole position for the short race on Saturday.

However, the track quickly ramped in SQ2, and Norris’s hopes of fighting for the pole position started to fade as he was down in 11th. But, the 25-year-old pulled out a solid lap out of the bag as he went the fastest of all in SQ2 the very next second, allowing his mother to breathe a sigh of relief.

Fans shared their reactions to Norris’ mother watching the qualifying session.

“CISCA REPRESENTS ALL OF US 😭😭😭.”

“Think we were all feeling the same stress Cisca Norris was feeling there,” one fan wrote.

A myriad of other fans shared how they empathized with Lando Norris’ mother and wrote:

“BLESS CISCA NORRIS I WAS SO SCARED,” one netizen wrote.

“LANDO ALMOST GAVE MAMA CISCA A HEART ATTACK 😭😭😭,” another netizen wrote.

“The way I screamed ‘same girly’😭,” a third netizen wrote.

Norris was in the battle for the sprint pole with his teammate and Max Verstappen.

Lando Norris had a decent qualifying performance for the sprint race

Lando Norris remained the lead McLaren driver until SQ3 began. But this trend changed the second the final qualifying segment went green, as Oscar Piastri looked to be more comfortable with the MCL39.

This ultimately saw the Briton fall down from a lofty provisional pole earlier in the session to P3 as Max Verstappen and the Aussie both went faster. Reflecting on bagging the sprint pole, his papaya teammate was delighted as he said in his post-qualifying interview:

“Yeah, that was a good lap. A little scare in SQ2 with the lap deletion, but the car has been mega all day and I feel I’ve been able to put in a lot of good laps. This is a track I love, it is my favorite of the year.”

If the top-three finish in the same order during the Sprint race, Piastri would extend his championship lead to 10 points.