McLaren driver Lando Norris is facing a 10-place grid drop at this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps as his team is fitting new Mercedes Formula 1 power unit components.
Norris had been at risk for engine-related penalties earlier than planned after suffering a series of reliability issues this season. The reigning world champion was already on his third and final set of control electronics allowed for the entire season after encountering issues in China and Japan at the start of the campaign.
With Mercedes now making its upgraded specification available to its customer McLaren, which is expected to deliver improved reliability, the papaya team will move Piastri to his third power electronics and Norris to his fourth unit – with the latter incurring a 10-place grid penalty for exceeding his allowance.
“McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team will fit car Number 1 with a fourth power electronics [unit] this weekend in Spa, exceeding our permitted number of allocated power electronics units and incurring a 10-place grid penalty,” the team confirmed on Thursday.
McLaren clarified it has installed the new unit on Norris’ car in Belgium to take advantage of Spa-Francorchamps’s overtaking potential, which could help the Briton mitigate the damage from his lowly grid position.
“While the power electronics unit we installed in Japan, and have used in every session since Miami, has worked reliably, Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains has since introduced a series of reliability fixes to their new power electronics systems,” the team added.
Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images
“However, in order to take advantage of these improvements, we must incur a 10-place grid penalty on Lando’s car in order to take a new unit. We have chosen to do this in Belgium, a circuit where overtaking is relatively more prevalent, as opposed to the following two events in Hungary and Zandvoort.
“We now plan to use this fourth power electronics unit for the remainder of the season, in order to maximise reliability while minimising sporting penalties on Lando.”
McLaren will also get Mercedes’ latest specification of the internal combustion engine after being made to wait by its supplier. Mercedes took the new ICE, which is also expected to be more reliable, in Austria, with fellow customers Alpine and Williams having the new V6 available in Silverstone.
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– The Autosport.com Team
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