McLaren’s Lando Norris fears he is doomed to take grid penalties for power unit changes later in the season following his retirement from the Eifel Grand Prix.
Norris endured a power unit problem for several laps during the race until the symptoms became terminal. He pulled off the circuit into retirement at the Dunlop curve on lap 44.The McLaren driver’s frustrations were compounded by the fact that the team had fitted his third new Renault engine, turbocharger, MGU-H and MGU-K before the race after a problem was detected on his previous unit after qualifying. That leaves him vulnerable to grid penalties over the remaining six races of the season.
“It’s not looking good at all,” Norris admitted. “It’s not my problem, it’s nothing that I can control.”
Before his power unit began to malfunction, Norris ran as high as third, aided by Valtteri Bottas’s retirement and Daniel Ricciardo pitting during a Virtual Safety Car period.
“The first quarter was really good,” said Norris. “Good opening laps, good pace. And then it all started to go very wrong.
“We had some problems initially with the engine, I think. I was managing those problems every single lap. I was having to press buttons and whatever to manage it. So I was struggling a lot, not much power. And in the end they just gave up completely
“I was on for a definite fourth pretty much and hopefully fighting Ricciardo for third.”
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Jere (@jerejj)
11th October 2020, 20:19
Out of the remaining events, Bahrain 1 would be the best one for taking a hit on grid position should he have to exceed his PU element allocations. This is if he can survive through the next three without further problems.
BasCB (@bascb)
12th October 2020, 7:22
I think he will have to take a new engine next race, unless they find they can recover this one.
Rott
12th October 2020, 1:19
This is another kid with lacking substance and lots of noise.
Ric will show how it’s done without cracking a hole in the PU.
McLSTiAMG
12th October 2020, 6:50
@Rott You’re making it sound like the issues are Lando’s fault. Clearly, they aren’t. Carlos had similar issue in Spa this season.
Mashiat (@mashiat)
12th October 2020, 9:37
Ricciardo has as many podiums as this “kid”…
Balue (@balue)
12th October 2020, 8:58
So unfair with this double whammy of first losing a great position and lots of points because of engine failure, then further punished in the next race for the same reason.
Same with leaving the pits with a loose wheel for example. The rules needs to be tweaked.
Norris was doing great with the old spec front wing, but was not impressed with his shouting at the race engineer and not being able to cope with being told useful information. Hardly knew what car was behind him either. Stressful situation no doubt, but it proved he is still lacking.