By Rory Carroll
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) -Formula One championship leader Lando Norris swept to pole position for the Las Vegas Grand Prix in a wet and slippery qualifying on Friday with McLaren teammate and closest title rival Oscar Piastri only fifth.
Red Bull's reigning world champion Max Verstappen, third in the standings after 21 of 24 races and 49 points off the lead, joined the Briton on the front row but was 0.323 slower.
Norris, who cannot secure the title in Las Vegas, leads Australian Piastri
by 24 points and will be chasing a third win in a row on Saturday night at a street circuit where McLaren had expected to be off the pace.
The pole was his seventh of the season, equalling Verstappen's tally, with the last seven races won from that position.
Spaniard Carlos Sainz qualified an impressive third for Williams with George Russell, last year's winner on the famed floodlit Strip, fourth for Mercedes.
"Boy, that was stressful. Stressful as hell," said Norris after a cold night session that started in steady rain with the Aston Martins on full wets and the rest on intermediates.
"It's so slippery out there. As soon as you hit the kerb a bit wrong, like I did, you snap one way, lose the car the other way. Close to hitting the wall.
"No one has driven around here in the rain before, so it was difficult to know what to expect."
New Zealander Liam Lawson was sixth for Racing Bulls with Fernando Alonso seventh for Aston Martin and Isack Hadjar eighth in the other Racing Bulls.
Ferrari's Charles Leclerc qualified ninth and Pierre Gasly completed the top 10 for Alpine.
Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton, who normally excels in wet conditions, will start last at a street circuit his team had hoped would favour them.
Television footage showed him hitting a bollard, which may have become stuck under the car, before the seven-times world champion failed to beat the chequered flag for a final flying lap that he aborted.
"Couldn't get the tyres to work," the Briton said over the radio.
Leclerc also had his hands full, his Ferrari stalling on track and then re-starting in that phase.
Alex Albon smashed his Williams' suspension when he hit the wall at the end of an opening phase that also left Mercedes' Italian rookie Kimi Antonelli in 17th and Red Bull's Yuki Tsunoda 19th.
"It was very strange, like ice. I don't know what has happened specifically but clearly something isn't working," said Tsunoda.
Norris made it through Q1 in 13th, with Piastri a safer sixth, while Russell set the pace ahead of Verstappen on the treacherous surface.
The second phase was delayed slightly for repairs to the bollard at turn 14 and to clear debris from the track as the rain eased off and a dry line emerged.
(Writing by Alan Baldwin in London, editing by Peter Rutherford)
