Lando Norris retired from the Canadian Grand Prix due to a gearbox failure, after an unscheduled pit-stop, McLaren has revealed.
The reigning champion retired with a car failure in Montreal after 38 laps and was battling back through the field, running just inside the points following McLaren’s botched decision to go for intermediate tyres at the start.
Boss Andrea Stella robustly defended this decision when questioned about it, as he gave further details about what happened to Norris, including an unscheduled Lap 15 pit-stop before the Briton was forced to pull over at the hairpin just after half race distance.
“With Lando, we had two issues,” Stella debriefed to media, including ApexF1.
“One was that the car started to overheat, therefore we needed to stop relatively early, which was to clean the radiators, and I’m not sure how clear this was on television.
“But the stop was actually for reliability problems, and then there was a gearbox problem which was independent of this overheating.
“This gearbox problem would have happened in all cases, so it was not Lando’s day; he would not have finished the race.
“So if there is a day to have all the problems in a single [race], then this was that day.”
