McLaren has explained it elected not to pit Lando Norris to chase the fastest lap in Formula 1‘s Singapore Grand Prix as it wanted to “focus on bringing the car home”.
Norris demolished the competition at the Marina Bay Street Circuit as he turned pole position into a crushing 20-second win over championship rival Max Verstappen.
However, Norris was denied a maiden grand slam as RB’s Daniel Ricciardo strapped on new Softs in the closing stage to beat the McLaren driver’s previous best time.
The Briton, who is 52 points behind Verstappen, missed out on the extra point, prompting McLaren to underline the relationship between RB and parent team Red Bull.
At one stage Norris had built up the 28-second gap on Verstappen that he needed to have enough time to make a second stop, but McLaren chose not to bring him in.
McLaren boss Andrea Stella has revealed the desire to avoid unsettling Norris behind backmarkers on a tight street track inspired the decision to avoid a second stop.
Asked whether McLaren considered telling Norris to increase his advantage over Verstappen to have a pit stop in hand, Stella told media including Motorsport Week: “No, in the second part of the second stint, our attention was drawn on the fact that as soon as you got behind the backmarkers, the car started to feel tricky.
“So it was all about no issues, no mistakes, no lock-up.
“We had seen already in practice that as soon as you are behind a slow car, things look like there’s something wrong with the car. It’s just the effect of the dirty air.
“So the focus was entirely on bringing the car home.
“We suggested to Lando to have an attempt at the fastest lap, which he achieved, but, after that, we didn’t want to talk about fastest lap anymore.”
Norris agrees with McLaren’s decision
Norris appeared to have no qualms with McLaren’s choice as he disclosed that his two close shaves with the barrier occurred when he experienced turbulence ahead.
“I hit the front wing against the barrier, so it might have tweaked it a touch, but I don’t think probably much to change it, but hard to know,” he recalled.
“On these cars, as soon as you tweak something a tiny bit, it can have quite a big impact, but nothing that I was probably feeling.
“I mean, I was pushing, but also it was just as I was catching up to the dirty air from the cars ahead, whether they were three, four seconds ahead.
“It changes from the past, you know, 20 laps that I had. You have a little bit less grip, a little bit less downforce. Tyres are going away a little bit.
“It just caught me out. So it wasn’t like a lack of concentration or anything. It was just a bit of a surprise to me.”
Norris aimed to give McLaren the chance to pit
Norris has admitted that he continued to press on at a relentless pace towards the latter exchanges to provide McLaren with the option to stop him for a second time.
“Yeah, it was definitely not like I was cruising,” he addressed. “I was pushing to open up a gap.
“At one point I wanted to try and open up a pit window to give myself an opportunity to maybe box at the end of the race for quickest lap if I needed to try and achieve that.
“Daniel stole that away from me at the end of the race.
“So, yeah, a tough one, but it wasn’t easy. The car was not easy to drive, especially on the Hard tyres. I struggled a lot more than what I did on the Medium.
“And especially just with the traffic and things, it was a bit harder to manage the second half of the stint compared to the first, but I was pushing.
“Let me tell you, I was definitely pushing. Probably too much, hence the mistakes I was making, or the two mistakes I made with the wall, but otherwise things were going well.”
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