Lando Norris on McLaren’s nightmare at F1 Bahrain Grand Prix: “Mechanics had a lot of pit stop practice”
The McLaren driver encountered issues from Lap 1 of the 2023 season-♛opener,☂ eventually pitting five times before his car was finally retired on its sixth stop.
His teammate 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Oscar Piastri, on his F1 debut, beca𝓀me♏ the first driver of the new season to retire with separate problems.
“I think the best thing is the mechanics 💝did a lot𒈔 of pit stop practices,” Norris said. “That’s the biggest positive.
“I think the pace was ok-ish and we could have scored a point today 🌺at least so it’s a shame we had 🐲the problems we did.
“Good start, good launch, made up a few positions and then we ha🔜d problems 🃏from Turn 1 basically – pneumatic problems and various other issues.
“That jꦯust brought out us of the race more and more, we had to pit every ten laps and that was it.”
T𒁃eam principal Andrea Stella explained: "There was a pneumatic pressure leak on Lan🍌do's car. We discovered this leak relatively soon in the race.
"Then we knew that it was possible only to do 10, 11 lapsꦯ each time before having to refill.
"We decided to stay in the race, we decided to try and stay 🌄at leas💧t within one lap from the leader within the last 10 laps.
"Then if there's a safety car, try and see if there was an opportunity. We did s♉ix stops."
Piastri was forced to retire when⛦ an attempt to fit a new steering wheel, to solve an electrical problem, failed.
Stella said: "The electronic damage was further down the line around the steering column. So, the steering wheel wasn't the problem. It was a problem with the harness probably. We are investigating. Not🍎 fixable in a short time."
McLaren have experienced a horrible start to 2023 - Norris was spotted punching a wall in frustration during preseason testing i🀅n Bahrain.
CEO Zak Brown had already admitted that th🌱e car’s development was behind schedule.
James was a sports journalist at Sky Sports for a decade covering everything from American sports, to f📖ootball, to F1.
