McLaren team principal Andrea Stella believes trackside marshals made a mistake in showing Lando Norris yellow flags on his final flying lap in Q1 that resulted in him being knocked out of qualifying and in 17th place on the starting grid.
Norris had slipped into the drop zone in a surprisingly competitive opening segment to qualifying but was on course to comfortably progress to Q3 as he exited Turn 15. A small mistake at the final braking zone, Turn 16, had him sail wide over the exit curbs, costing him considerable time launching onto the 1.4-mile front straight.
Onboard footage then shows Norris lifting through the flat-out Turn 17-18 chicane as he passes the slow-moving Esteban Ocon, who was travelling well off the race line with a puncture.
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Ordinarily, cars returning to pit lane off the race line are covered with waved white flags, notifying drivers of a slow-moving vehicle but not requiring them to take avoiding action.
“Lando had a little mistake out of the last corner, but above all we found in the high-speed chicane a yellow flag and he decided to abort the lap,” Stella told SiriusXM. “The yellow flag is due to Ocon going slowly, but for such a situation we don’t think that a yellow flag is required, because he is going at a slow pace but there is no risk for anybody. It is like when someone is on an in-lap and they are going slowly.
“I think for this kind of situation a yellow flag is not required.”
Stella said he expected the FIA upon reflection to agree that yellows had been shown to Norris in error.
“In terms of what we can do, we can have a discussion with the FIA, we can review it together and support the FIA,” he said. “Here everyone is trying their best, and we are not upset with anybody; it’s just unfortunate.
“I’m pretty sure the FIA may acknowledge that the yellow flag wasn’t required and maybe there was a marshal that was too eager. It’s a bit unfortunate that we had this yellow flag deployed, and this caught Lando in his important lap to go through Q1.
“I don’t think we can do anything about it. We just have to accept it, reprogram and go on a mission tomorrow to score as many points as possible with Lando — and obviously capitalize on the good and strong qualifying of Oscar [Piastri] today.”
The strange confluence of events that dumped Norris out in the bottom five was particularly costly in his pursuit of Max Verstappen’s 62-point championship lead. Piastri qualified second behind pole-getter Charles Leclerc, while Verstappen endured another forgettable qualifying session that left him sixth and outqualified by teammate Sergio Perez for the first time this season.
Stella said Norris’s focus would be on sneaking into the top 10 to minimize Verstappen’s chance of doing serious damage to the Briton’s title chances.
“It looked like Red Bull were going to be pretty strong, but in qualifying somehow they didn’t capitalize on the hints of very strong performance they saw yesterday,” he said. “They are Red Bull, and when we talk about Red Bull we can never assume they will be an easy target. They can race at a very high level, and I think potentially it could just be exploitation of the new tires and they surely will have a very strong race pace.
“With Lando, if we get within the radar of a Red Bull, it means the race has gone very well. I would above all think of trying to score some points — and then here in Azerbaijan you have red flags, you have safety cars, and definitely you need to enter the race with the mindset that all is possible, and we want to take the opportunities that come to us.”