Two seconds – this was the margin between Lando Norris passing the Madring pit entry and the call for the virtual safety car that ended his victory hopes for the Spanish Grand Prix – one that Formula 1 race winner Kimi Antonelli ultimately accepted.
Norris had pulled out a 6.2s lead over Antonelli by the start of the 14th lap, and looked every bit in command at the front of the field once the Briton had shaken off a frenetic opening lap – in which the championship leader put him under pressure, only to run off the road at both Turn 1 and Turn 5.
What looked like the nascent stages of an easy Norris win was turned on its head by Lance Stroll‘s stoppage at Turn 20 at the end of the lap, as the Aston Martin’s brake pedal went long and eventually forced the Canadian to park up at the run-off.
Here’s what happened step by step – and why Norris ended up missing the boat for a cheap virtual safety car stop.
3:26pm – Stroll’s stoppage at Turn 20
Lance Stroll, Aston Martin Racing
Photo by: Alex Bierens de Haan / LAT Images via Getty Images
Stroll reported that he was already running out of brakes, a fate that had afflicted Lewis Hamilton a few laps prior. In Hamilton’s case, the Ferrari was unable to slow down enough to make the corners and the seven-time champion was forced to back off and corral his car back to the pit lane. Ferrari had not wanted to hurt Leclerc’s planned hard-tyre run deep into the race, hence the call for Hamilton to bring the car back to the pits, but Stroll had no such qualms.
To his credit, he attempted to make it a lot easier by stopping in front of the marshals’ post, just about getting the car to the opening in the barrier to have his car pushed away. The yellow flag was waved just as Norris had exited Turn 14. At this juncture, there was no real indication that a VSC would emerge; again, perhaps the expectation was that Stroll’s car was in a position to be pulled away swiftly by the marshals.
“In hindsight, it would have been a good idea [to pit pre-emptively], but we will have to review with my engineers to see whether it was kind of obvious that it would end up in a virtual safety car,” said McLaren team principal Andrea Stella.
“Here, the problem is that you need to be extremely careful because it is 27 seconds if you don’t pit under a virtual safety car. So if you get it wrong it will be extremely penalising: from the lead, you pit unnecessarily and now you have lost the victory.
“So, I think a good rule is to respond to what is a fact, to what is the real condition of the circuit. But we will definitely take a look as to whether in these conditions it was just simply obvious that it would end up in a virtual safety car.”
3:27pm – The VSC is called
Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Federico Basile
When Norris passed Stroll’s car, the yellow flag was still out. McLaren chose not to react pre-emptively, and the race leader passed through Turns 21 and 22 – the final two corners around the Madring.
As soon as Norris exited the final corner, the VSC was then called – as McLaren calculated it, this was just two seconds too late to bring Norris in.
Antonelli, who was now 6.3s behind Norris, had enough time to be given a heads-up to pit – as was Max Verstappen and George Russell. For Antonelli and Verstappen, this offered them the opportunity to switch their medium and soft tyres respectively for the hard, ensuring they could go to the end of the race.
This ensured Norris would have to go for at least one more lap before making a stop, but there was a significant danger that the VSC would end far too soon for him to get the ‘cheap’ pit-stop – the long pit-lane at the Madring costing about 30 seconds under normal speed.
3:29pm – Norris stops after VSC ends
Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Rudy Carezzevoli / Getty Images
Antonelli and Verstappen emerged from their VSC pitstops behind Leclerc, who’d also stayed out as the full-course yellow conditions were called too early for him to gamble on switching from the hard tyre. Norris, were he to receive the VSC service, would have likely emerged ahead of the Ferrari driver.
Norris was told that he would be stopping regardless of the VSC still being out; indeed, it was annulled as he was rounding Turn 21 and he promptly entered the pitlane. He duly complied with the call and took his sole stop for the hard tyre, although this added further troubles to his race as the front-right wheel was slow to come off, appending a few extra seconds to his stationary time in the box.
Stella reckoned that the slow stop did not make much material difference, as Norris would have ended up behind Russell regardless; the only saving grace was that Russell needed to stop again having taken on the medium. After catching the Mercedes, Norris spent three laps running within a second of Russell before the Briton pitted at the end of lap 28.
“In fairness and for completeness, we had a seven second pit stop, so there’s definitely takeaways even when it comes to our operations.
“It would have not made a difference for the final result, because probably Lando would have pitted anyhow behind Russell and even if not, it would have not been possible to overtake Verstappen and Antonelli. So definitely, we take note that there’s a lot of work to do in our operation, and it’s not the first time that we have a slow stop. But in terms of the race itself, it didn’t make a difference.”
Once Russell came in, Norris indeed caught Verstappen – but suffered a similar fate, and was trapped in the Dutchman’s wake until the end of the race as victory slipped further from his grasp with each passing lap.
Radio traffic
Will Joseph: Yellow flags at turn 20. Yellows. Virtual safety car deployed, virtual safety car deployed. No drives in the delta.
Lando Norris: We box?
WJ: If it stays long enough.
LN: How big’s the crash?
WJ: I think someone’s brakes… There are marshals on track at turn 20, I haven’t seen it. Just try and stay on the delta.
And Lando [radio breaks]?
LN: I think so, do you?
WJ: Yes, we are.
WJ: Lando, confirming we are boxing this lap, irrespective.
LN: Confirmed.
WJ: We still think there’s marshals on track.
WJ: Virtual safety car ending, virtual safety car ending.
LN: Confirmed box still?
WJ: Yes, confirmed box. So box this lap.
Should McLaren have gone long?
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Federico Basile
The remaining question is this: should McLaren have delayed Norris’ stop with the intent of building a gap? With Leclerc holding up Verstappen and Antonelli, there’s a case to be made that Norris might have been able to go a few extra laps, build up the 30-second advantage needed to at least clear Antonelli, and either come out in front of Leclerc – or hang on behind him and wait for the Ferrari to stop.
The problem here is that Norris was running with old mediums, and that the gap to Leclerc pre-VSC was only 13.8s. While Norris was still going quicker than the Ferrari driver, the per-lap deltas between them had been dropping: he was 0.506s quicker on lap 10, 0.272s quicker on lap 11, 0.264 quicker on lap 12, and 0.027s quicker on lap 13.
As such, attempting to build the gap was simply not going to happen, especially as Leclerc was finding no hard-tyre degradation at that stage and continuing to improve with fuel burn. For Norris to find a safe pit gap, he’d need to find at least 16 seconds when the VSC was lifted, essentially an impossibility. He was between a rock and a hard place, and Norris and McLaren chose the rock.
It was simply just bad timing on everyone’s part; Norris quipped that McLaren had been “too fast” over the weekend – had McLaren been in its usual position, he’d have got the VSC rub of the green.
“We considered staying out, but you have to you have to accept the fact that now you are on relatively used medium tyres and the people behind you will be a new hard – so you’re never going to open a gap on people with a new hard,” Stella concluded. “Therefore we kind of needed to accept that that was what we should have done, and the fact that it was incredibly unfortunate.
“Sometimes we talk about being unlucky. I think at times the being unlucky is used for too many applications but, in this case, it’s almost a mathematical definition of being unlucky.”
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