Andrea Stella reveals the real reason for McLaren rotating Lando Norris’ race engineers in 2023
Lando Norris has had multiple race engineers on his radio in 2023.
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Andrea Stella (image via Motorsportweek), Lando Norris (image via PlanetF1)
Lando Norris and McLaren had a slow start to the 2023 F1 season. The Woking-based team failed to bring in necessary upgrades in the first few rounds and dropped the pecking order. However, things have turned around since the Austrian GP when the Briton first got a major upgrade package. McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella recently mentioned the reason for swapping race engineers for Norris throughout 2023.
The British driver has had a long-standing relationship with race engineer Will Joseph on the British team. Although, this season, Norris has often had his performance engineer Jose Manuel Lopez be on the team radio for a few sessions instead of Joseph. Andrea Stella explained the motive behind such a rotation instead of the traditional stable structure throughout a complete season.
The major reason for this change is for the personnel not to be fatigued with the ever-increasing number of races as F1 will expand to 24 races in 2024. Stella stated, “The first one is that we have 24 races and it starts to become a challenge, even at a personal level, to make sure you can cover all the races.” Moreover, the McLaren team boss suggested that it can allow for a quick substitute for the role of race engineering in case of an emergency.
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McLaren satisfied with Lando Norris’ new race engineer arrangement
Additionally, Andrea Stella was convinced that the new structure had allowed for enhanced skills of various engineers that in turn, made it better for Lando Norris as well. He said, “I’m very pleased without going into the specifics of one engineer or the other. I’m very pleased with how this process is leading to a very competent group of engineers that can interact with the drivers..”
The Woking-based team has seen an upturn in fortunes in the latest rounds. Although, the Belgian GP was a mixed bag for McLaren despite Oscar Piastri‘s staggering P2 result in the F1 Sprint. Piastri retired after a turn-one incident, while Norris salvaged a P7 finish after a poor first stint. Subsequently, work is left to be done for the British team to truly race at the front in F1 for the long term.
Thus, Andrea Stella is delighted with how Lando Norris’ rotating rooster of race engineers has worked so far. The McLaren team boss believed that this would meet multiple objectives, including the improvement in terms of communication with Norris and the availability of substitutes. It would be interesting to see if more teams follow this new model.
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Armaan Agarwal
(2341 Articles Published)