MCLAREN’S Lando Norris will have a 10-place grid penalty at the Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday as a result of exceeding the permitted number of engine parts.
The world champion’s car will be fitted with a new battery, Norris’ fourth of the season, one more than is permitted.
McLaren decided to fit the new unit, along with taking the latest specification of Mercedes engine, because the one Norris was using does not have the reliability fixes introduced after a series of failures this year.
The team chose this weekend to take the penalty because overtaking is relatively easy at Spa, and it is the last race before they introduce the first of two significant upgrade packages.
McLaren have fallen to the back of the top four teams in recent races as rivals have introduced upgrades, but the hope is that the aerodynamic package to be brought in across the Hungarian and Dutch Grands Prix on either side of Formula 1’s summer break will return them to competitiveness.
They decided that it was better to take the grid penalty in Belgium, where they expect to be no more competitive than at the last race in Britain, but where passing is relatively straightforward, than compromise Hungary, where the car should perform better and overtaking is notoriously difficult.
Norris said: “I have to wait and see really how the overtaking is. We probably have a small straight-line speed advantage, comparing to people a little bit further back. So, comparing to them we should have a good chance.
“To just overtake in general could be pretty difficult here. But the slipstream is pretty big, and there’s still a few straights, but there’s no straight-line mode (through some of the flat-out sections), and therefore the slipstream is pretty large, and you can gain a good amount from that.
“But we know it’s better than Zandvoort, and better than Hungary taking penalties. I hope it’s not the end of my weekend before it started, but I’m still confident we can have a good race.”
Norris’ grid penalty comes after a troubled start to the season for the team that won a drivers’ and constructors’ championship double last year, in both performance and reliability terms.
Technically, the part replaced in Belgium is known as the ‘power electronics’, which is a control computer within the battery module.
Norris failed to start the Chinese Grand Prix in March after a terminal issue with his power electronics unit, and a second example of that part had to be withdrawn after suffering problems in practice at the following race in Japan.
The Japan unit was repaired but suffered a terminal problem in practice in Monaco.
A McLaren statement said: “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 (HPP) has since introduced a series of reliability fixes to their new power electronics systems.
