DOHA, Nov 29 (Reuters) – McLaren’s Oscar Piastri won the Qatar Grand Prix sprint race from pole position and for the third year in a row on Saturday to trim teammate Lando Norris’s Formula One championship lead to 22 points.

Mercedes’s George Russell finished second, 4.951 seconds behind the Australian whose win was his first of any sort since the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August, with Norris third and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen fourth.

Norris now has 396 points with Piastri on 374 and Verstappen on 371 with 50 remaining to be won.

Qualifying for the main grand prix was following later, with Norris still in a position to win his first championship on Sunday.

(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Clare Fallon)

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