Lando Norris was left managing a critical brake problem at the end of the Chinese Grand Prix that was close to affecting McLaren’s one-two.
The Briton spotted the problem with just over 10 laps to go before the end of the race when he felt his brake pedal going ‘longer’ in the cockpit.
McLaren engineer Will Joseph guided Norris through the final laps of the race, although the Briton continued to set faster lap times in a bid to close the gap to teammate and eventual winner Oscar Piastri.
Once McLaren told Norris that the issue was ‘critical’ he started to back off, although he still had to manage the threat from George Russell on the final lap, who closed the gap to 1.3s seconds at the chequered flag.
The whole scenario conjured up memories of drivers having brake failure a few laps before the end, however, Marc Priestley has recalled one story that happened with Kimi Raikkonen when he was at McLaren.
Marc Priestley recalls crazy Kimi Raikkonen story after Lando Norris near-miss in China
Raikkonen once had the same problem while leading a race at Magny Cours, which Priestley believes was similar to what Norris experienced during the Chinese GP.
“When he was being told to slow down towards the end, in the laps preceding that he’s been told not to brake heavily and still setting quick laps closing in on Piastri. It reminded me in a situation I was once in with Kimi Raikkonen. We were leading the French GP and Kimi was out in front with no real threat from behind and he’s setting faster and faster laps,” said Priestley.
“We were seeing excessively high wear on the brakes in the data, so we came on the radio and said “Well Kimi, there is no need to push” but Kimi in his style ignored that message and continued to set quicker laps, opening up a 20-second gap to the car behind unnecessarily.
“We got to the end of that race and as I got to the car when it rolled into the pit lane into parc ferme, and as the car came to a stop the front right brake disc fell out of the wheel! So the wear had become so excessive that the final press of that brake pedal it shattered the brake disc.”
How much time did Lando Norris lose in the final laps of the Chinese GP?
Norris had a comfortable nine-second lead over Russell heading into the final 10 laps of the Grand Prix, but the brake problems put him under pressure from the Mercedes driver.
The gap stayed at a stalemate 6.1s heading into Lap 56, then as Norris was told to back off more in the braking zone by his engineer it caused a dramatic loss of time.
| Lap | Gap Between Norris and Russell |
| 54 | 9.1 seconds |
| 55 | 4.6 seconds |
| 56 | 1.6 seconds |
Within four corners the gap between Norris went from 6.1s to 4.5s, 3.4s, 2.6s, then exiting Turn 14 it got as low as 1.6s between the Briton and Russell.
It shows just how close the margin was with the problem as another lap would likely have led to Norris losing his second place to Russell.
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