Norris on McLaren’s nightmare: “Mechanics had a lot of pit stop practice”

The McLaren driver encountered issues from Lap 1 of the 2023 season-opener, eventually pitting five times before his car was finally retired on its sixth stop.

His teammate Oscar Piastri, on his F1 debut, became the first driver of the new season to retire with separate problems.

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“I think the best thing is the mechanics did a lot of pit stop practices,” Norris said. “That’s the biggest positive.

“I think the pace was ok-ish and we could have scored a point today at least so it’s a shame we had the problems we did.

“Good start, good launch, made up a few positions and then we had problems from Turn 1 basically – pneumatic problems and various other issues.

“That just brought out us of the race more and more, we had to pit every ten laps and that was it.”

Team principal Andrea Stella explained: "There was a pneumatic pressure leak on Lando's car. We discovered this leak relatively soon in the race.

"Then we knew that it was possible only to do 10, 11 laps each time before having to refill.

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"We decided to stay in the race, we decided to try and stay at least within one lap from the leader within the last 10 laps.

"Then if there's a safety car, try and see if there was an opportunity. We did six stops."

Piastri was forced to retire when an attempt to fit a new steering wheel, to solve an electrical problem, failed.

Stella said: "The electronic damage was further down the line around the steering column. So, the steering wheel wasn't the problem. It was a problem with the harness probably. We are investigating. Not fixable in a short time."

McLaren have experienced a horrible start to 2023 - Norris was spotted punching a wall in frustration during preseason testing in Bahrain.

CEO Zak Brown had already admitted that the car’s development was behind schedule.