Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri reveal why they knew early on that McLaren was in for trouble in Las Vegas and how they are dealing with it
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri confirmed ahead of this weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix that they already anticipated an impending disqualification in Las Vegas when reviewing the race with the team at the track.
“There was a bit of an expectation, so it wasn’t completely out of the blue or a surprise,” Norris said. “So we were pretty prepared for what the outcome might be. But actually, I felt pretty good about it. I left the track. We did our debrief. We talked about what was good and what wasn’t good. Things we need to improve here.”
Both McLaren drivers were disqualified after the race in Las Vegas because their cars failed technical inspection due to excessive wear on the skid blocks on the underbody. They had previously finished the race in second (Norris) and fourth (Piastri) place.
The zero points benefit championship rival Max Verstappen, who is now only 24 points behind championship leader Norris after his victory and is tied on points with Piastri.
Piastri: “Knew we were in trouble”
“Of course it hurts,” Norris admits. “There’s so much effort that goes into every weekend, and all that effort felt like it was wiped out very quickly. Everyone at McLaren is disappointed, but actually it was quite easy for me to put it behind me, take a few days off and start afresh here.”
Piastri also reveals that he immediately recognized the precarious situation when McLaren was summoned by the stewards. “That’s when we knew we were in trouble.”
“When you’re called before the stewards, especially for something like this, you try to stay optimistic, but there’s only so much optimism you can have. So I knew even then that we weren’t in a good position. I found out officially at the airport.”
Stella: Sensor failure made diagnosis impossible
The team tried to argue that there were mitigating circumstances for the illegal wear of the skid blocks—without success. McLaren team principal Andrea Stella explains that Piastri’s sensor failure meant that the condition of the underbody could not be monitored in real time.
In Norris’s case, the team did give the order to slow down a little, but due to the nature of the problem, caused by severe bouncing, this had little effect.
“It’s not as simple as just lifting more and then it gets better. Sometimes, when you lift more, you get more bouncing and the effect is even worse,” explains Norris. “It is what it is. I was lifting throughout the race, so doing it earlier wouldn’t have made any difference.” Piastri says he felt the bouncing, but sometimes a lot of contact with the ground doesn’t automatically mean a lot of wear. “It depends a little bit on the track.”
“It definitely wasn’t a particularly comfortable race in the car, but I didn’t realize how bad the wear was on my car. Because of the sensor failure, we didn’t know exactly how bad it looked,” said Piastri.