Lando Norris said McLaren’s performance in the Singapore Grand Prix was especially impressive in the wake of the controversy over their ‘mini DRS’ rear wing.
McLaren agreed to change the design of their rear wing after rivals pointed out it flexed at speed under peak loads during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend, where they won.Norris won yesterday’s race in Singapore emphatically, leading by almost half a minute at one stage. He said their dominant performance without the previous wing was especially impressive.
“We’ve not changed anything on the car from here to last weekend or the weekend before,” he said. “We’ve even had to make tweaks to some of our wings and things that people have complained about. But we’ve still had a great weekend and probably one of our most dominant weekends here.”
He said the ‘mini DRS’ hadn’t been key to McLaren’s performance. “I don’t think that’s made the difference, honestly. It was just that the car’s been mega for a good amount of time.
“I’ve not been able to come out on top for quite a few of them when I felt like I had the pace and I had the ability to do. Some of that is down to my own fault and not executing things well enough.
“So I’ve paid the price for not doing a good enough job at times. But when I lead after turn one and things are a bit more straightforward then we can have a day like today.”
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He made two noticeable errors during yesterday’s race, touching barriers at turns 10 and 14, but he said the contact did not appear to affect the car.
“The team said that there was something with the front wing maybe being a little bit off. I hit the front wing against the barrier, so it might have tweaked it a touch, but I don’t think probably much to change it.
“But it’s hard to know. On these cars, as soon as you tweak something a tiny bit, it can have quite a big impact, but nothing that I was probably feeling.”
He suspects one mistake occured because he began to encounter the turbulent air from cars he was catching to lap.
“You have a little bit less grip, a little bit less downforce. The tyres are going away a little bit. It just caught me out.
“So it wasn’t like a lack of concentration or anything. It was just a bit of a surprise to me.”
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2024 Singapore Grand Prix
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Kris
23rd September 2024, 8:23
Aren’t the complaints about the wing specific to the low downforce configurations?
w0o0dy
23rd September 2024, 9:27
Yes, they didn’t even run the low downforce wing here.
The huge gap Norris created against Max and the rest is the result of how efficient the McLaren produces it’s downforce. So the higher the downforce the bigger the gap. RedBull may have found some things to get back to being 2nd fastest and they have Max. If Norris continues to make small mistakes.. he will not be the 2024 WDC even though his car is clearly the fastest. I do expect at least one more win for Max… That might be enough to see Norris off.
Nick T.
23rd September 2024, 10:34
Yup. Therefore a title quote and title.
Nick T.
23rd September 2024, 10:06
They didn’t change anything for this race. The only difference is that their trick wing, which I have zero problem with, is not one that works at low speed tracks like this. So, this is an utter BS line from Norris.
Coventry Climax
23rd September 2024, 10:53
This is a pretty pointless remark by Norris, but I can see he makes it to divert attention.
There is zero relationship between being legal or not on previous rounds and winning this round with a completely different configuration due to completely different track characteristics.
The McLaren wing should be thoroughly – and transparently please, FiA? – investigated.
If anything else, to take away all speculation and controversy about it, whether the verdict turns this way or that.
Then for next season, do away with all those silly rules please, FiA. They’re not adding to a ‘level playground’ -by derfinition-, not adding to the racing, not adding to the show, and not adding to my enthusiasm for and interest in F1.
Crawliin-from-the-wreckage- Special Unhinged Edition (@davedai)
24th September 2024, 3:55
Nikolas Tombazis has it all sorted out for us.
1. Everything is legal.
2. McLaren is to be praised for making tweaks that aren’t necessary.
3. Sunlight offers better results than current FIA tests..
4. It’s a phenomenon not a loophole.
Here
FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis highlighted the governing body was always happy with the legality of the wing.
“We discussed the event after the Baku race,” he told Sky Sports Italy. “Usually, teams that complain about other configurations come to us on Friday to discuss.
“It has to be said that McLaren passed all the tests, that is important, and fulfilled everything that was written in the technical directives.
“So on the basis of that to us it didn’t seem appropriate in retrospect to act in this way. All the teams, without exception, even the ones that are loudest these days, have at times benefited from this approach.”
McLaren supposedly made changes to the wing to cool the growing tension between rival teams as it targets its first F1 title since 2008.
Tombazis hailed the approach by McLaren but signalled the matter was magnified by the sunshine in Baku.
“In my opinion it was the right thing to do in a sporting manner and did not deserve this exaggeration,” he said.
“Then it is natural because the championship is very tight. At Baku there was sunshine in a certain direction, which highlighted this phenomenon more.
“This was not the case at Monza and Spa, where nobody noticed it. Maybe if someone had come to us, we would have acted a little earlier.”
my favourite is we would have acted a little earlier when he says there was no need for action.
Coventry Climax
25th September 2024, 10:32
Haha, yeah, especially in combination with:
Proves my usual point again though, the FiA always manages to make a total mess of things. They’re simply not in control and inconsistency and indecisiveness seems to be in their DNA, which the subsequently try to cover up with making arrays of the most silly rules you can think of – and then patches for those rules again later on ofcourse.
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
23rd September 2024, 16:01
On the other hand, the one-off Piquet tribute livery worked a treat!