McLaren identify cause of painful Lando Norris retirement

McLaren has taken responsibility for Lando Norris' retirement from the Dutch Grand Prix, absolving power unit supplier Mercedes of any blame.

Team principal Andrea Stella explained late on Sunday evening that the Woking-based squad had "identified an issue on the chassis side" of the British driver's MCL39.

The terminal problem on Norris' car had initially appeared to be power unit-related, an educated assumption predicated on various factors.

In addition to Norris telling his engineer, Will Joseph, over team radio that he thought there was smoke coming into his cockpit mere moments before the engine "just shut off", Mercedes has suffered numerous power unit issues across its own team and its customers this season, with McLaren fortunate to avoid being affected. 

However, that expectation was before Stella's revelation, which provides the most concrete indication yet that it was a rare fault with the McLaren itself.

"We’ve identified an issue on the chassis side, and we will do a full review before we go racing again in Monza," the Italian said.

"This is the first technical problem for the team after a long run of faultless reliability."

Removing reliability as a 'factor' in the drivers' title fight

The 54-year-old had been deliberately indeterminate in the immediate wake of the incident, avoiding apportioning blame in his post-race media session.

"Reliability has been a strong point at McLaren for a long time," Stella told the media, including RacingNews365. "We have had what looks like a technical reliability problem, which is always disappointing.

"The whole team will process this, try to take the learning, reviewing the problem, fixing it, and making sure that this is not a factor anymore for the future, not only for the remainder of the championship, even if, obviously, this is the main focus for the moment."

The reliability failure could prove critical in the intra-McLaren championship battle between Norris and Piastri.

Whilst the 25-year-old was set to drop seven points in the title hunt to the Australian - falling from nine to 16 points back - before his retirement, he now finds himself staring down the barrel of a 34-point deficit with nine rounds remaining.

When further questioned on the incident in the initial aftermath, Stella added: "We have some initial indications based on the data. But, in fairness, we don't have full proof of what has happened to Lando's car.

"So I would refrain from making any speculation about is it a problem on the chassis side or is it a problem on the engine side.

"In fairness, it doesn't make, in terms of the result, a big difference. Even in how this is perceived, let me say, I want to take the opportunity to remind ourselves that we just see chassis, engine - it's one single team.

"So, we will see technically where the problem is, we will fix it, and we will go again."