Lando Norris dismissed the notion that his retirement from Formula 1‘s Dutch Grand Prix should be considered “inevitable” due to McLaren‘s own high standards.
The Brit was running in second in the race at Zandvoort when, what team boss Andrea Stella later described as a failure “on the chassis side”, caused the McLaren to slow.
Norris’ MCL39 eventually ground to a halt, leaving leader and team-mate Oscar Piastri to take victory unchallenged, opening up a 34-point lead in the Drivers’ Championship.
The DNF leaves Norris in an uncomfortable position ahead of this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix at Monza, needing to overcome what is now a much larger gap in the title race.
Despite Mercedes High Performance Powertrains left in the clear after Stella’s assessment, it was still a shocking eventuality, given McLaren’s remarkable recent reliability record.
When asked if, given the long period of time since a mechanical failure of any kind at McLaren renders one “inevitable” at some stage, Norris denied such an outlook.
“Not even, because I think the team and HPP have done a very good job over the last two years,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
“I think we’ve had pretty much minimal… This might be the first one that I can remember that’s cost us any points or anything at all.
“It’s not even inevitable at this point because we expect, and everyone works at such high standards, we don’t expect anything really.
“So that’s why it’s more, again, just unlucky. It’s not like in the olden days when you used to pretty much blow up every other race. Then I think it was inevitable.
“We don’t expect it nowadays. It’s just frustrating, unlucky and that’s it.”
Given the recent unenviable record of engine issues hampering its customer teams Williams and Aston Martin this year, the HPP department will be mightily relieved as Stella’s revelation.
And there will be a relief of sorts for Norris too, as there is now the likelihood of no grid penalty being required, enabling him to fully push in his quest to claw back the deficit at Monza this weekend.
READ MORE – Lando Norris can be more ‘chill’ about F1 title race after unexpected Dutch GP retirement
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