McLaren were “ready to battle” stewards over Norris pole lap deletion

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella says that his team were prepared to challenge the stewards had Lando Norris lost his pole-winning lap in sprint qualifying.

Norris secured his second consecutive sprint race pole position at Shanghai in a rain-affected qualifying session on Friday.

The third and final phase of sprint qualifying took place in wet conditions after rain started falling at the end of SQ2. Several drivers went off track around the wet circuit, including Charles Leclerc – who spun lightly into the barriers – Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri among others.

Norris ran wide at the final corner on his penultimate timed lap, ending up with his outside wheels in the gravel trap. Due to running wide, Norris’s lap was deleted by the stewards. However, as the infraction had occurred at the final corner, his following lap was also deleted – a regular practice in qualifying and race sessions.

However, likely due to the fact Norris lost some of his speed running into the gravel and gaining no advantage for his subsequent lap when running wide, the stewards reinstated Norris’s quickest lap time, which he completed without exceeding track limits. That time secured him pole position by over a second from Lewis Hamilton

Stella said McLaren would have fought to have Norris’s pole time reinstated had the stewards not done so. “We were ready to battle that decision,” he told the official F1 channel.

“I think maybe that was deleted because Lando, on the previous lap, went off at the last corner. But actually, if you go out at the last corner on the previous lap, then you lose a lot of time in the following lap because you launch at much lower speed.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

“I guess race control realised that themselves and Lando deserves the pole position and it’s good that the lap has been reinstated.”

While race director Niels Wittich’s event notes issued before each race weekend can outline that drivers will lose subsequent laps when track limits breaches are committed out of the final corner – the most notable example being the Red Bull Ring – there is no such provision for this weekend. Therefore, the stewards had no grounds in which to delete Norris’ lap or any legitimate lap due to a track limits breach out of the final corner on the previous lap.

McLaren had not expected to be as strong around Shanghai than at some of the earlier circuits in the season. Stella believes the result reflects more the conditions than the inherent pace of McLaren’s car this weekend.

“First of all, it’s sprint pole in conditions which obviously were pretty extreme in terms of the low-grip condition in intermediate tyres today,” he said. “You could see drivers going off the track, which is not normal.

“I think this is just the reflection of how low the grip was in these conditions. So I would say, first of all, well done to Lando. He really drove minimising the impact of these conditions, finding his way and, maximising what was available. So well done to Lando.”

Norris’s team mate Oscar Piastri took eighth place, three seconds slower than Norris’s best. However, Stella revealed that Piastri had suffered a gearbox fault during his final push lap.

“A little bit of a shame for Oscar, because he had an issue with a shift out of the hairpin,” he explained. “The gearbox went into neutral, so he lost a lot of time – otherwise we would have had the second McLaren high up in the classification.

“So, so far, so good. We will see in dry conditions how much of our expectations were actually genuine.”

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free