McLaren: Disqualification in Las Vegas, Stella defends Norris and Piastri’s setup

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has insisted that his team did not take excessive risks with the setup of their car at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, despite the disqualification of both cars due to excessive wear on the plank. Lando Norris, who finished second before the disqualification, and Oscar Piastri, who finished fourth, were stripped of their points in Las Vegas. This reignited the battle for the title with Max Verstappen, with two races remaining until the end. The plank wear rules exist to prevent teams from running their cars at dangerously low ride heights in search of performance, but Stella insists that McLaren made a genuine mistake in Las Vegas due to a lack of practice in dry weather conditions. Based on the data we had acquired in the training sessions, we do not believe we have taken excessive risks in terms of ride height and we also added a safety margin for qualifying and the race, compared to the training sessions, in terms of ground clearance. Stella explained that the specific cause of the excessive wear was the “unexpected appearance of extensive porpoising”. Porpoising occurs when the underside of the car gets so close to the track surface that the airflow rushing underneath suddenly stalls and creates a momentary loss of downforce. The car rises again on its suspension, which in turn means that the aerodynamics of the car’s underbody start working again and push the car down, resulting in contact between the plank assembly and the ground. Once the porpoising movement begins, it continues until the driver slows down enough to stop it. Stella said the team tried to mitigate the problem during the race by instructing its drivers to lift and coast at the end of the straights, when the aerodynamic load on the car is more extreme, but ultimately the problem persisted in both cars. Stella added: “From the first laps of the race, it was clear from the data that the level of unexpected porpoising would be a concern.” In Las Vegas, Norris’s car was found to have 0.12 mm above the permitted amount of wear on the most worn skid block, while Piastri’s was found illegal at 0.26 mm. Although small, any excessive wear margin is enough for a car to be disqualified. Stella said: “The FIA itself has admitted that this lack of proportionality should be addressed in the future to ensure that minor and accidental technical infringements, with minimal or no performance benefits, do not lead to disproportionate consequences.”

Norris arrives at the last two rounds of the season with a 24-point lead over his teammate Piastri and Verstappen, which means he can secure the title this weekend in Qatar, but it is possible that the championship will be decided in the last round in Abu Dhabi. Stella is confident that the problems the team faced in Las Vegas will not be repeated in Qatar and believes that the lessons learned from the disqualifications will ensure that the cars are legal at the end of this weekend’s race. Stella concluded: “What happened in Las Vegas was due to an anomaly in the car’s behavior, rather than being the result of an excessive or unreasonable pursuit of performance.”