Lando Norris will face a 10-place grid penalty at the upcoming Belgian Grand Prix, with McLaren opting to fit a new power electronics unit to his car in an attempt to tackle their reliability struggles.<\/p>\n
Mercedes<\/a>\u2019 engines have been subject to criticism<\/a> in recent rounds due to retirements that were out of drivers\u2019 control, such as Kimi Antonelli<\/a>\u2019s in Barcelona. As one of their customer teams, McLaren<\/a> haven\u2019t been able to avoid enduring similar problems.<\/p>\n Norris<\/a> has been held back on multiple occasions by issues with the power unit, which caused his failure to start the Chinese Grand Prix and further complications in Japan and Monaco.<\/p>\n As per the regulations, if a driver uses more power unit elements than the permitted allocation, a grid penalty will be imposed at the first event where each additional element is used. In this case, McLaren are hopeful that the overtaking opportunities at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps<\/a> make this weekend the best time to suffer the setback.<\/p>\n A statement made by the team reads: \u201cMcLaren 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.<\/p>\n \u201cCar Number 1’s first power electronics unit suffered a terminal issue in China, which meant Lando was unable to start the race. Lando\u2019s second power electronics unit, fitted in Japan, needed to be withdrawn for remedial work after suffering issues in Free Practice, which necessitated moving to a third and final power electronics unit within the permitted allocation.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the second power electronics unit was able to be repaired after the Japanese Grand Prix, it suffered a terminal issue in FP2 in Monaco, and was withdrawn from our allocation once again.\u201d<\/p>\n McLaren\u2019s numerous upgrades have helped Norris recover some lost ground in the Drivers’ standings<\/a>, where he now sits in fifth place with 97 points, but they are still eager to use their refreshed power unit and continued development to take the fight to Mercedes and Ferrari<\/a>.<\/p>\n The statement adds: \u201cWhile 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.<\/p>\n \u201cHowever, in order to take advantage of these improvements, we must incur a 10-place grid penalty on Lando\u2019s car in order to take a new unit.<\/p>\n \u201cWe 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris will face a 10-place grid penalty at the upcoming Belgian Grand Prix, with McLaren opting to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-544309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}