(Motorsport-Total.com) – At the Spanish Grand Prix, there was a two-second gap between Lando Norris, who was passing the pit entry of the Madrid circuit, and the call for the virtual safety car, which ultimately cost him all hopes of victory. Instead, the win went to Kimi Antonelli.
Read more Nico Rosberg criticizes Madring: Sainz must take co-responsibility
Norris had built a gap of 6.2 seconds to Antonelli by the start of lap 14. After a frenetic opening phase, it seemed as if Norris would control the race at the front. Although the championship leader Norris was under pressure, he went off track himself in turns 1 and 5. The advantage Antonelli gained by cutting the track had to be given back, and he had to let Norris pass.
The race, which had looked like a sure win for Norris, was turned upside down at the end of lap 20 by a stationary Lance Stroll. The brake pedal of the Aston Martin had become long, forcing the Canadian to stop his car in the runoff area.
Below we explain step by step what happened and why Norris ultimately missed a favorable stop under the VSC.
15:26 – Stroll stops
Stroll reported over the radio that his brakes were failing. A fate that had also befallen Lewis Hamilton a few laps earlier. In Hamilton’s case, his Ferrari was unable to reduce speed sufficiently in the corners.
As a result, the seven-time world champion was forced to drag his car back to the pits. Ferrari did not want to jeopardize Charles Leclerc’s long stint on hard tires, so they called Hamilton back to the pits. However, there were no such tactical considerations for Stroll.
Credit must be given to the Aston Martin driver for trying to park his AMR26 in front of a marshal so that the car could be pushed into the opening of the track boundary.
As Norris was just coming out of turn 14, the yellow flag was still being waved. At that time, it was not foreseeable that a VSC would follow. Perhaps it was expected that Stroll’s car in this position could be recovered quite easily by the track marshals.
“In hindsight, we should have [precautionarily] gone to the pits, but we need to analyze this with the engineers to understand whether it was really obvious that a virtual safety car had to come,” said McLaren team principal Andrea Stella.
“The problem here is that you have to act extremely cautiously. If you don’t pit during a virtual safety car, you lose 27 seconds. So if you make a mistake, I can punish that immensely: You lead the race, unnecessarily pit, and now you’ve lost the win.”
“I think it’s always good to react to the facts, to the actual circumstances on the track. But we will take another look to see if the virtual safety car was simply obvious under these circumstances.”
15:27 – The VSC comes
After Norris had passed Stroll’s car, the yellow flag remained visible. McLaren decided not to pit as a precaution, and the leader drove through turns 21 and 22, the last two corners on the Madrid circuit.
As soon as Norris exited the last corner, the VSC was called. According to McLaren’s calculations, this was exactly two seconds too late to bring Norris into the pits.
Antonelli, 6.3 seconds behind Norris, had enough time to be called into the pits. The same applied to Max Verstappen and George Russell. For Antonelli and Verstappen, this was the perfect opportunity to switch from their medium and soft tires to hard tires. Thus, they could finish the race.
Norris had to stay on track for another lap before he could make his stop. However, this posed the risk that the VSC would end too early to give him a “favorable” stop. On the long pit lane at the Madrid circuit, you normally lose about 30 seconds.
15:29 – Norris pits, the VSC ends
Antonelli and Verstappen returned to the track behind Leclerc after their VSC stops. Leclerc had stayed out because it was too early in the race for a strategic tire change. If Norris had been able to pit under the VSC, he would probably have come back out ahead of the Ferrari driver.
Read more 81 points behind: George Russell hardly believes in the World Championship title anymore
Norris was told to pit regardless of whether the VSC ended or not. Promptly, the end of the VSC phase was announced as Norris was just driving through turn 21.
He followed his team’s call, stopped for the only time that race day for a set of hard tires, and got into even bigger trouble. The front right tire was difficult to remove from the rim, causing the stop to take a few seconds longer than usual.
Team principal Stella noted that the slow stop would not have made a big difference since Norris would have come back out behind Russell anyway. Only the fact that the Mercedes driver had to pit again to change his tires was a consolation. After Norris caught up to the Mercedes, he spent three laps within a second behind Russell before the Brit pitted at the end of lap 28.
“In all honesty and completeness, we had a seven-second pit stop. We need to draw some conclusions for our work processes from that.”
“In the end, it wouldn’t have made a difference because Lando would probably have come to the pits behind Russell anyway. And even if not, I don’t think it would have been possible to overtake Verstappen and Antonelli.”
“Certainly, we acknowledge that we need to work on our work processes. It’s not the first time we’ve had a slow pit stop. But for the race itself, it made no difference.”
Should McLaren have stayed out longer?
Finally, the question remains: Should McLaren have delayed Norris’s stop to build a gap? Leclerc would have held up Verstappen and Antonelli, allowing Norris to stay out a few extra laps.
The goal would have been to build a 30-second lead. This would have been necessary to come back out ahead of Antonelli. That way, he would have either landed ahead of Leclerc or waited behind the Ferrari until its pit stop.
The problem with this strategy is that Norris was running on old medium tires. The gap to Leclerc before the VSC was only 13.8 seconds. Although Norris was faster than the Ferrari driver, the time gap in lap times gradually decreased.
Formula 1 Quiz
What is Lando Norris’s podium percentage in Formula 1?
Test yourself now in the Formula 1 quiz and compare yourself with other users
On lap 10, Norris was still 0.506 seconds faster, on lap 11 still 0.272 seconds, on lap 12 0.264 seconds, and on lap 13 only 0.027 seconds. In other words: the attempt to open a gap to Leclerc would not have worked. Especially when Leclerc had passed the point at which the hard tire no longer degraded. With a lighter car, the Monegasque was getting faster.
To have a safe gap for the pit stop, Norris would have needed a gap of at least 16 seconds at the end of the virtual safety car phase. That was simply impossible. He was in a difficult position anyway, where Norris and McLaren had to choose between bad and worse.
For everyone involved, the timing was terrible: Norris joked later that McLaren was simply “too fast” this weekend. If McLaren had been in its normal position in the field, they would have easily benefited from the VSC.
“We had considered staying out, but you just have to realize that you are running on relatively old mediums while people behind you are lurking on new hard tires.
“So you might be making a gap for all these people,” was Stella’s conclusion. “We just had to accept somewhere that we had to do this, and that it was just unfortunate. Sometimes we talk about bad luck. I think sometimes the term is overused, but in this case, it is almost the mathematical definition of bad luck.
Read more After VSC Misfortune in Madrid: Lando Norris Wishes for Fairer Rules
