SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium -- Lando Norris beat title rival and teammate Oscar Piastri to pole at the Belgian Grand Prix in a comfortable front-row lockout for McLaren.
Norris' first lap time, a 1:40.562, was enough for pole position, with Piastri's best time at the end of Q3 0.085 seconds slower.
It sets up another duel between the dueling McLaren teammates who have exchanged all but two of the race wins this season.
"It was a decent lap, so happy," Norris said after the session. "Everyone was pretty worried after yesterday. I wasn't even that far off, it was just a couple of little issues that we had.
"The car has been flying all weekend, Oscar has been doing a good job all weekend, so we are pushing each other a lot."
Norris is looking to record his third straight victory on Sunday, having come to Belgium following wins in Austria and his home race, the British Grand Prix.
Earlier in the day Piastri had extended his lead over Norris by a single point, to nine, by finishing ahead of him in the sprint race.
Piastri had finished that sprint event behind Max Verstappen, who had won the sprint in a brilliant cat-and-mouse battle, but the reigning world champion was unable to replicate his earlier heroics in the final qualifying session.
But Piastri said he was "disappointed" with finishing second to his teammate in qualifying.
"A bit disappointing," he said. "The second lap was coming together really well, and I just made a little mistake into [Turn] 14 and lost a lot of time.
"I felt like the car was very good again, but it's fine margins out there. It's obviously not a bad place to be starting but there was more in it, which is always disappointing."
Verstappen had been sitting third but got wheelspin coming through the first corner of his key lap and was eventually beaten to third position by Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc by just 0.003 seconds.
Leclerc finished 0.338 seconds off the lead, he said he was happy with the unexpected result.
"I'm very happy today, It's strange to say that because it's still 0.3s [to Norris] and it's only a third place, but I did not expect it.
"We thought we were quite a lot more back. We knew that we had something more in the car with the upgrade this weekend, but we still struggled yesterday, but that was a really, really good lap."
Teammate Lewis Hamilton's miserable week continued in the other Ferrari, as he was eliminated from Q1 after his lap was deleted for exceeding track limits at the top of Eau Rouge. Hamilton had initially set a lap good enough to progress to the second segment of qualifying.
Barring penalties, the seven-time world champion will start 16th on the grid.
Hamilton was also eliminated in Q1 during Friday's sprint qualifying session. He started 18th on the grid and finished 15th in the race.
Williams driver Alex Albon was one of the stars of the session, qualifying fifth ahead of Mercedes driver George Russell, who had finished outside the top ten in the sprint race earlier in the day.
While Red Bull might not fancy Verstappen's chances of replicating his morale-boosting sprint win, there was a good reason to be optimistic from the other car, with Yuki Tsunoda, who was running a new floor as part of Red Bull's upgrade package, seventh. The result is his best qualifying performance since the Australian Grand Prix when he was driving for the junior team.
Racing Bulls pair Isack Hadjar and Liam Lawson finished eighth and ninth respectively, with increasingly impressive Sauber rookie Gabriel Bortoleto -- the chief benefactor of Hamilton's deleted Q1 lap -- qualifying 10th.
Haas' impressive pace in sprint qualifying and the sprint race did not quite materialize again, with Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly eliminated in the middle qualifying session.
Pierre Gasly was 13th ahead of Nico Hülkenberg and Carlos Sainz.
Behind Hamilton was Alpine's Franco Colapinto, while Mercedes rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli's difficult weekend continued as the Italian teenager qualified 18th.
Aston Martin endured a nightmare session, with Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll bottom of the order and set to start at the back of the grid.