McLaren provide update on Norris’ car after FP2 stoppage in Monaco

McLaren have confirmed that an electrical problem caused Lando Norris’ stoppage during second practice for the Monaco Grand Prix, though they are yet to determine “exactly what’s gone wrong”.

Norris’ MCL40 ground to a halt at the Nouvelle Chicane in the early stages of Friday’s FP2 session, leaving the reigning World Champion on the back foot heading into McLaren’s 1000th Grand Prix weekend.

After the track action had concluded, McLaren’s Chief Technical Officer and Chief Designer, Rob Marshall, provided an update on what went wrong, and the Woking-based squad’s start to the weekend in general.

On Norris’ issue, Marshall said: “We don’t know conclusively yet. He had an electrical problem on the car and it shut down.

“We’ve not had enough time to go through the data and find out exactly what’s gone wrong yet. It could be anything, but it’s electrical.”

It meant Oscar Piastri was McLaren’s sole driver representative for the majority of second practice – the Australian winding up seventh on the timesheets, behind the Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes cars, and around a second off the pace.

“I think we’re confident we can make it a bit better,” Marshall added of the situation. “I think we were struggling in the initial part of the lap and then as it went through Sector 2 and 3, we started to be a bit more competitive.

“I think maybe that’s tyre temperature or maybe something else, but we’ve got a bit of stuff to work on, certainly, in the first half of the lap.”

Piastri himself reflected: “It felt okay, just not as speedy as we would like, unfortunately. A bit of a difficult one.

“I think we made a bit of progress for FP2, but we went from a second-and-a-half off to a second off. It’s been a tough day for us, for sure, so some things to find overnight, definitely.”

He continued: “We always expected Ferrari to be quick, and they look very, very quick as well, but we were hoping we would be a fair bit closer, so let’s see what we can try and muster up for tomorrow.

“I think in today’s F1 there’s never anything you can do to turn the car completely upside down. We’ll try and find something, for sure, because we need to, but I don’t have any great ideas at the moment.”