McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella has outlined the cause of an “unacceptable” brake issue on the MCL39 piloted by Lando Norris in the Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix.
Norris was running in second for the majority of Sunday’s race at the Shanghai International Circuit, trailing McLaren team-mate and eventual winner Oscar Piastri.
However, in the closing laps of the race, Noris had to keep his eyes on the rear-view mirrors as a progressively long brake pedal threatened to end his race.
Norris managed the self-proclaimed “nightmare” issue well, but his seven-second margin to third-place man George Russell shrank to just 1.3s by the time the chequered flag fell and ended any hope of challenging Piastri for victory.
Stella, albeit happy that McLaren picked up the 50th one-two of the team’s history, was dissatisfied with the impact the issue had on Norris’ race.
“We are happy with the one-two, but we had a failure on Lando’s car with the brake pedal that we had to manage over the last twenty laps,” he said.
“Lando and the team did a great job in managing the situation and adapting the driving style to the problem, which then got worse to the point where it put the result at risk, which is unacceptable from a reliability point of view, we need to do better.”
Stella gave a limited explanation behind the issue, but sought privacy rather than disclosing the whole picture.
“We understand what the problem is, which I can’t disclose for IP reasons,” he said.
“But fundamentally, it had to do with a leak in one of the components, not in the brake line, but somewhere else, and the main action required was to limit the peak brake pressure.”
How Norris managed China brake issue
Stella went on to detail how Norris had to adapt his driving to mitigate the brake pedal issue.
“You could brake, but very, very gently,” he explained.
“So what was 100-metre braking, became 200 metres, and towards the end, it was 300 metres because Lando needed to lift the throttle, coast to a certain speed and then apply very gentle brake pressure.
“That was to avoid the leak becoming too fast.
“The brake pedal was going long, and what we needed to do was to avoid the peak pressure, so Lando needed to brake with less and less and less peak pressure.
“It got to the point over the final laps where he was just coasting for a long time, off throttle, and then just applying minimum brake pressure to stop the car and go around the corner.”
READ MORE – Lando Norris ‘lucky’ to finish F1 Chinese GP due to ‘critical’ brake pedal issue
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