McLaren explains fuel error that nearly cost Lando Norris in F1 British GP sprint
McLaren Formula 1 team principal Andrea Stella has explained the root cause behind Lando Norris fuel saving concerns in the British Grand Prix sprint.
On Saturday Norris made a good start from sixth and came out on top of a three-way battle for third place with George Russell and Max Verstappen, a long way behind leading pair Kimi Antonelli and Lewis Hamilton.
But after having built a comfortable gap to Russell, the reigning world champion came under pressure again from the Mercedes man in the closing stages as he was asked to save fuel.
Norris just about managed to hang onto third, but wasn’t too pleased with the needlessly stressful end to the 17-lap race. Over the team radio an agitated Norris urged his squad to “get it right for once”.
“We needed to compromise the pace a bit because we were managing fuel and Lando gave us a good reminder,” McLaren team boss Stella told Sky.
“We need to do better because it’s the second time in a row that we asked the driver to manage fuel. This is not good enough. We need to do better as a team. But Lando compensated for that in a brilliant way.”
Rather than McLaren deliberately taking too many risks underfueling the car, Stella explained the Woking squad got its fuel consumption calculations wrong, which are trickier to get right this year due to the added energy management variables.
Andrea Stella, McLaren
“It’s not about [underfueling],” he insisted. “It’s more about the prediction as to the fuel consumption. So you needed to adapt to what actually the consumption [is], dependent on the various conditions or the racing.
“This is a very interesting Formula 1 with these power units. You have a yo-yo effect, which obviously moves data from what you think is the baseline. So interesting in all respects, but definitely a situation that you would like to avoid because it takes a few tenths off the gap.”
In any case, securing third in the sprint was a positive surprise after Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri qualified sixth and seventh respectively on a weekend McLaren was expected to struggle with its MCL40, which is less aerodynamically efficient than the Mercedes and Ferrari.
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The big gap to Antonelli and Hamilton further underlined how much work McLaren has to fight at the very front of the field. “If we look at Hamilton and Antonelli, they are still decently faster than us. So, we know we have work to do,” said Stella.
“But considering that we started this weekend a little bit on the back foot in practice, we found some performance in the sprint qualifying and it looks like we have found some further performance into the sprint.
“We now need to keep improving the car. There’s a couple of ideas we have to adjust a couple of things in the car in preparation for the remainder of the weekend. So hopefully we can add one tenth or something.”
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