McLaren diagnose cause of 'nightmare' Norris failure

McLaren boss Andrea Stella has explained the cause behind the brake failure Lando Norris described as "scary" and his "worst nightmare" in the Chinese Grand Prix.

In the closing stages of the Shanghai race, Norris was forced to drastically drop his pace to manage a brake issue that worsened with every lap after initially reporting a "long" pedal to the team. 

Norris was forced to abandon his chase of leading team-mate Oscar Piastri and nearly fell into the clutches of the chasing George Russell. He was forced to lift and coast at the heavy braking zones of Turns 6 and 14 to avoid putting pressure on the fragile brakes. 

The Briton eventually held on for a McLaren one-two to keep the lead in the drivers' championship by eight points over Red Bull's Max Verstappen.

Detailing what went wrong aboard Norris's MCL39 machine, speaking to media, including RacingNews365, Stella said: "We understand what the problem is, which I can't disclose for IP reasons.

"But fundamentally, it had to do with a leak in one of the components, not in the brake line, but somewhere else, and the main action required was to limit the peak brake pressure.

"You could brake, but very, very gently. So what was 100-metre braking, became 200 metres, and towards the end, it was 300 metres because Lando needed to lift the throttle, coast to a certain speed and then apply very gentle brake pressure. 

"That was to avoid the leak becoming too fast.

"The brake pedal was going long, and what we needed to do was to avoid the peak pressure, so Lando needed to brake with less and less and less peak pressure. 

"It got to the point over the final laps where he was just coasting for a long time, off throttle, and then just applying minimum brake pressure to stop the car and go around the corner."