Lando Norris was left puzzled by his McLaren's lack of straight-line speed in Azerbaijan Grand Prix qualifying. The Briton had to settle for fifth on the grid, three tenths adrift of teammate Oscar Piastri, who qualified second.
This marked Norris' biggest deficit of the season, having previously outqualified Piastri in nine of ten sessions. Although a lock-up in Q3 didn't help, the primary issue wasn't just driver error. There were indications of a technical glitch on the MCL40 affecting engine performance.
“There's more in my car for some reason than the other car,” Norris told the media after the session. “So we have to understand why I'm basically having to push more than Oscar to try and make up for my straight-line speed.”
Data showed Norris' top speed was 3.4 km/h lower than Piastri's. McLaren has early clues. “On Lando's side specifically, we observe a deficit of power that we are investigating,” team principal Andrea Stella explained. “It seems to be linked to some behaviour of the fuel injection, something that hopefully we, or the adaptive systems, should be able to improve for tomorrow. It looks that occasionally the power unit generates a bit less power, but this is a specific phenomenon, a specific issue. It has nothing to do with the overall behaviour of the power unit.”
However, Norris' problem occurred in a broader context: McLaren is significantly down on straight-line speed compared to Mercedes, their power unit supplier. George Russell was 8.1 km/h quicker than Piastri and 11.5 km/h faster than Norris. This raises questions about whether McLaren is too draggy or Mercedes is better at exploiting the power unit.
“It's both,” Norris replied. “They have a very efficient car, they always have done for years. We need to take a big step in that direction if we want to be competitive in any straight-line-speed track for the rest of the season.”
Stella concurred and stressed that McLaren needs to match Mercedes' level across all areas. “In a circuit like this, we have seen in every practice session and then in qualifying that we were losing time in the straight compared to Mercedes. While we have the same power unit, there's a few differences, and I think it's fair to say that their package, chassis, ratios, power unit itself, it just seems to be more effective when it comes to generating top speed. We saw how strong they were in Monza, pretty much in every long straight in the championship they were able to generate more speed.”
With a long season ahead, McLaren must quickly find solutions to reduce their straight-line speed deficit. Otherwise, their performance at fast circuits like Monza, Spa, or even Las Vegas could be at risk. The championship battle is still open, and every point lost could be costly.
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