Lando Norris is already close to needing a new battery pack which would incur a penalty (Image: Getty)
Lando Norris is down to his last permitted battery pack for the season – and a penalty will be incurred if, or perhaps when, he needs to introduce another into his pool. Despite the new engine regulations which was always going to lead to increased parts wear and unreliability, drivers remain limited to just three battery packs per season.
And now, still in March and in the midst of the third race weekend of the year – and with 19 more to come between now and December – Norris already finds himself in a critical situation. He missed the Chinese Grand Prix two weeks ago because of a problem with his engine’s battery, and team principal Andrea Stella has confirmed that component “is lost”.
But there was another setback at Suzuka on Saturday when, having discovered a fault, McLaren had to make another battery change ahead of final practice and qualifying. To take part in those sessions, Stella has confirmed that they had to introduce Norris’ third and final permitted battery pack for the whole season.
The Italian said: “The problem we noticed before the start of FP3 was on the same power unit component, the Hertz module, which includes the battery. The only way was to remove the pack is to investigate it. Once investigated, we realised that it will take time to attempt a repair.
“We needed to give Lando the possibility to do the session, so we introduced a third battery pack, but we hope that we are going to be able to repair this [failed] battery pack and that we have not lost another component of the three allowed in a season, because the one that had the fault in China, that one is lost.”
As Stella said, there remains hope at McLaren that Norris at least still might have two usable battery packs – the one fitted to his Mercedes engine that he hopes to use in Sunday’s race, and the one taken off his car ahead of final practice. But if McLaren’s hope is proven wrong and they eventually find it cannot be repaired, then his situation really will become dire.
If a fourth battery pack is required later this season, which seems inevitable at this point, then Norris will have to serve a 10-place grid penalty in the Grand Prix at which the new component outside of his allocation is first introduced. If a fifth energy store ends up being required, then another five-place grid penalty will be applied. That same punishment will continue to be given for every further introduction of that same component, if required later this season.
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The introduction of different components beyond the annual allowance each incurs a penalty, meaning Norris would, for example, be given a 20-place grid drop if he were to take a fourth energy store and a fourth control electronics unit for the same race. As per F1 rules, any grid penalty of 15 or more places automatically puts a driver at the very back of the grid, behind every other car which was classified in qualifying.
Norris qualified fifth for the Japanese Grand Prix, on what has already been a heavily disrupted weekend for the defending champion. A hydraulic fluid leak suffered before the start of free practice two on Friday saw him miss a significant amount of track time, meaning he has been “playing catch-up for the whole weekend” having “done no laps on high fuel”.