Lando Norris on McLaren’s nightmare at F1 Bahrain Grand Prix: “Mechanics had a lot of pit stop practice”
The McLaren driver encouဣntered issues from Lap 1 of the 2023 season-opener, eventually pitting five times before his car was fi𒅌nally 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, became the first driver of the new season to retire with separate proble▨ms.
“I think the best thing is the mechanics did a lot of pit stop practices,” Norris sa𓂃id. “T🦩hat’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 had problems from Turn 1 basically – pneumatic problems and various other꧒ issues.
“That just brought out us of the rac𝄹e more and more, we had to pit every ten laps and that was it.”
Team principal Andrea Stella explained: "Th🎶ere was a pneumatic pressure leak on Lando's car. We discovered this leak relatively soon in the race.
"Then we knew that it was possible only to do 10, 🐈11 laps each time before having to r💫efill.
"We decided to stay in the race, we decided to try and stay at least within one l𝕴ap 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 six stops."
Piastri was forced to retire when an attempt to fit a new steering wheel, to solve an electrical pr꧅oblem, 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 invest♚igating. 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 in Bahra🐽in.
CEO Zak Brown had🦋 already 🃏admitted that the car’s development was behind schedule.
James was a sports journalist at Sky Sports for a decade coverin🐓g everyth𓆉ing from American sports, to football, to F1.
