McLaren says it is aiming to implement hardware fixes for its Formula 1 pitstop issues in time for 2026 as it explains why Lando Norris bearing the brunt of its slower stops is just a coincidence.
As Norris’ title battle against team-mate Oscar Piastri enters its final stages, the Briton suffered slower pitstops in three consecutive races. In Zandvoort, a 4.83s stop lost him ground to Piastri before Norris retired from the race. In Monza, a slow tyre change saw him lose track position to the Australian, which was the catalyst for a much-discussed driver swap, before a third consecutive plus-four second stop in Baku shuffled him towards the back of a train of cars he was fighting with.
Having investigated the string of issues, the squad is working on hardware changes to make its stops easier to reproduce for its mechanics, while putting some measure in place to avoid repeats.
Ever since significantly improving its pitstops for the 2022 season, McLaren’s pitcrew has consistently been among the best in F1 and placed second in the 2024 fastest pitstop awards.
But recent events have shown that while its squad is still more than capable of delivering fast pitstops, the hardware it uses is not making it as easy to replicate those as it should be, which is increasing the likelihood of human errors.
“Even if we see the execution of the pitstop by the pitcrew, this is really a combination of the human factor, the execution, the operation, with the quality of the hardware and how much the hardware makes the operation of changing tyres as natural and as easy as possible,” Stella explained.
Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Mark Thompson – Getty Images
“In our review, we identified that we needed to improve in all factors, from a human point of view, but also we know that our hardware makes the operation, for instance the gunning, a little bit more complex than it should be.
“We are applying some corrections, which will be mainly for next year now. At the same time, we are working with our pitcrew to make sure that we can mitigate some of these difficulties introduced by the hardware. It’s definitely quite a lot of work of review and correction and testing and practicing at the factory with the rig.”
Stella insisted that Norris bearing the brunt of the issues in recent weeks was coincidental, as over the entirety of the season pitstop times between its drivers are similar. What doesn’t help is that the last three races have all been one-stop races, making his issues stand out more.
“For the sake of checking it, we saw that when you average the pitstop time, it’s pretty much the same over the season for Lando and Oscar,” Stella added.
“I think it’s just a coincidence due to the short observation window of the last couple of events that this has accumulated on Lando’s side. But actually, the data don’t seem to support that across the season.”
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– The Autosport.com Team
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