Lando Norris qualified sixth for the Bahrain Grand Prix, but a misjudgement of the water on the Sepang circuit meant within a lap he was fighting from the back of the pack. McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has admitted that this mistake came from a single miscalculation that turned what could have been an interesting race into an exercise of damage control for both Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri.
The papaya-coloured team sent both cars out on medium compound tyres while the likes of Red Bull and Mercedes had their cars equipped with softs. The Woking squad expected the track would reward whoever committed to a slick compound after it quickly dried, but it took a lot longer than expected for this to happen.
Piastri pitted at the end of the first lap to move onto intermediate tyres, cutting his losses, but Norris doubled down on his slicks, staying out while the car refused to find any grip from the rain-covered asphalt.
“Well, at the pit wall, not in terms of making calls, strategy and tyres, the most difficult moment was certainly at the start where it was unclear whether the track was requiring intermediate tires or it wouldn’t work for the dry tires,” Stella told the media.
Why did McLaren make the wrong decision?
Opportunities were aplenty over the Sepang weekend, with high tyre degradation being a driving factor of strategy. Unfortunately, McLaren started its race on the back foot. The Italian explained how this mistake was made.
“On this kind of car already, what we saw on the laps to the grid is that the intermediate tyres were getting damaged very very rapidly. And also on this kind of tarmac the dry tyres work very, very easily, much more easily than pretty much every other circuit.
“So it looked from what we could observe that the track was drying up to stay on track with the dry tyres and we thought that the dry tyres would have switched on pretty rapidly. But as a matter of fact it took more laps than we thought. So with Lando we lost race time and with Oscar as well we lost race time because we needed to pit and accept that the track was only right for intermediate tyres.
“This was the most complicated moment. After that I think it was even if there were safety cars and some decisions to be made as to which compound but I think apart from this initial decision the rest was really easier.”
Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Kym Illman / Getty Images
Why Piastri bailed but Norris stayed out
Piastri overruled his side of the garage as he pushed for a quick change onto intermediates before he lost too much time on the slicks. Norris didn’t make such a call.
“It wasn’t as simple as splitting,” Stella confirmed on his drivers’ strategies. “It was more the uncertainty as to how much it would take for the dry tyres to start to work. And as a matter of fact, it took longer than what we thought it would take. So ultimately it was an incorrect judgment as to the crossover at which the dry tyres would be faster than the intermediate tyres.
“But there was not a logic as simple as saying let’s split and let’s see which one is right. We thought that the dry tyres would switch on faster. I think for Oscar, it was sort of Oscar himself thinking like it’s not going to be rapid and I think with Lando, it’s possible that we biased Lando in the wrong direction. I think it was probably more in the direction that he should have pitted for inters but as we discussed, we kind of attempted to see whether we could stay out on on on the medium tyres.”
Following the race, Norris admitted that his team convinced him to take the mediums, especially after his intermediate tyres didn’t perform well during the formation laps.
“It felt maybe a little bit of a risk because the slick on a wet track is always a bit of a risk,” he said. “But you know, there’s enough people on it that it was quite convincing at the time that it was supposedly going to be the right decision. And the laps to grid on the inter when it was a similar kind of condition, they had so much grip and my inter was completely shredded after one lap.
“We were convinced that slick would work, but I think it was just the fact you’ve never really been on the inter before, it made things… things just felt a lot better than they should have done in a way. So if we would have had a read on an inter from a previous weekend, maybe I would have been able to understand it more.
“But that convinced us and it clearly convinced a lot of people. Obviously Oscar probably made the right decision in pit boxing. And we got it wrong today, that’s all.”
Norris eventually pushed back up the pack to P8 after Alex Albon’s gearbox issues forced a safety car, but finished ninth.
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