{"id":541483,"date":"2026-03-15T06:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T06:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/541483\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T06:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T06:57:09","slug":"lando-norris-hits-trouble-ahead-of-f1-chinese-gp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/541483\/","title":{"rendered":"Lando Norris hits trouble ahead of F1 Chinese GP"},"content":{"rendered":"

McLaren<\/a> is scrambling to get Lando Norris<\/a> at the start of the Chinese Grand prix as it rectifies an electronic issue, with the world champion set for a pitlane start if the team can solve the issue in time.<\/p>\n

Norris qualified sixth on Saturday, but was not able to take up his grid slot during the pre-race procedure before the pitlane exit had closed.<\/p>\n

McLaren had to take off the floor of the reigning world champion’s car to find the root cause of the issue and continued working in the garage as the time keeps ticking towards 3pm local time, the start of the formation lap.<\/p>\n

If McLaren is able to get Norris into the race, he will be forced to start from the pitlane.\u00a0It’s the second consecutive pre-race snag for McLaren after Oscar Piastri<\/a> crashed out of his home race in Melbourne on the reconnaissance laps to the grid.<\/p>\n

Audi’s Gabriel Bortoleto<\/a> also hit trouble after he had already made it onto the starting grid. The Brazilian’s car weas pushed back to the garage by his mechanics some 15 minutes before the start of the race.<\/p>\n

At last week’s Australian GP, Bortoleto’s team-mate Nico Hulkenberg<\/a> didn’t make the start after being struck by a pre-race car problem.<\/p>\n

Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli will lead the field from pole as F1’s youngest-ever polesitter, followed by George Russell<\/a> and the two Ferraris of Lewis Hamilton<\/a> and Charles Leclerc<\/a>, with Norris’s McLaren-team-mate Oscar Piastri fifth.<\/p>\n

Any pitlane starters will line up behind Williams’s Alex Albon<\/a>, whose car was taken out of parc ferme after a disappointing qualifying session left him down in 18th. Williams<\/a> opted to make set-up changes to fix serious balance issues on Albon’s FW47.<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren is scrambling to get Lando Norris at the start of the Chinese Grand prix as it rectifies…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,263305,817,264921,813,816,1737,268259,913,85],"class_list":["post-541483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-chinese-gp","tag-f1","tag-f1-chinese-grand-prix","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lando-norris","tag-lando-norris-hits-trouble-ahead-of-f1-chinese-gp","tag-mclaren","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}