Japanese Grand Prix – McLaren’s Lando Norris had his race at Suzuka ruined after his brake duct was clogged by debris.
Lando Norris finished the Japanese GP in P13, having started the race from P8. A great start from the young British driver saw him vault up to P5 off the line but was back down in P7 by Turn 3 as he slowed to avoid the clashing Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc.
Just a handful of laps later, Norris came under serious pressure from Alex Albon in the other Red Bull and was barged aside at the chicane. Norris pitted immediately but, rather than the stop being for repairs after the slight contact with Albon, it was to have his brake duct unclogged from debris. McLaren confirmed that the debris was from Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari, which was shedding shards of carbon fibre as the Monegasque driver didn’t pit immediately for repairs after being damaged in the Verstappen clash.
Having had his brake duct temperatures soaring when he pitted at the end of Lap 4, Norris rejoined miles behind and on the Medium tyre but didn’t quite have enough pace to recover back to a points position. With no Safety Car intervention to help close the gap back up, Norris pitted again on Lap 25 for used Hard tyres and plugged away until the end of the race.
“I got a really good start off the line, and got past one Red Bull and Carlos and Hamilton.” explained Norris afterwards. “So I was past three guys which I was pretty pleased with. Then I saw Max spinning off in front of me as he had contact with Leclerc around Turn 2 which meant I had to slow down and hit the brakes to avoid contact and stop something worse happening. That meant two of them got back past me.”
“I got really unfortunate then in having some debris from one of the cars stuck in my brake duct, which meant I had to box otherwise it was going to catch on fire and something would have happened. So I had to pit really early on like Lap 5 or something, and didn’t have a big enough delta then to catch back up and make some moves and make use of the alternative strategy – I was just kinda stuck in no man’s land.”
“I did my best to come back through, but it just wasn’t enough.”
On-track, @alex_albon gave @LandoNorris a little bump 💥
So Lando repaid the favour post-race 😅#JapaneseGP 🇯🇵 #F1 pic.twitter.com/RkQf6zhdMw
— Formula 1 (@F1) October 13, 2019
Charles Leclerc was given a time penalty for not pitting immediately to have his broken Ferrari repaired, having had debris flying off his car and hitting the chasing Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton. McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl wasn’t happy about having his driver’s race ruined by the risky move taken by Leclerc: “We obviously strongly disagree with competitors leaving cars on track with entire front wing endplates hanging off and putting everyone else at risk. After Leclerc’s endplate finally exploded, Lando unfortunately caught some of the debris in his right front brake duct. This meant he had to box early, and his race was pretty much done. Even then, he gave it everything and put in a great performance.
As for the rather audacious overtake from Alex Albon into the chicane, Norris said he didn’t have any problems with what the young Red Bull driver had done: “I just about managed to avoid contact there. Going into the corner, he was behind me. He was pretty far behind so he must have made a pretty big move. I saw him in time. I had to box that lap anyway, so it kinda screwed me as I had to slow down even more and come into the pits. I started to go a bit wide and lock up due to my brakes overheating, which is why he went for it a bit more. Fair play to him though, he was the quicker car at the time anyway so he would have gotten me eventually.”
