If there was any team that could’ve had the opportunity to cement their rise as a constant and not a fluke this past weekend at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, it would be McLaren. After starting the season at the bottom of the order, a string of podiums and a sprint win by Oscar Piastri have seem them have the second-most points since the summer break, only behind the champion Red Bull.
However, the trip down to Nevada could not have gone much worse for the Woking outfit, as Lando Norris had a nasty crash on lap 3 of the race, compounding both McLaren cars exiting qualifying in Q1, with Norris starting in P16.
Photo Credit: McLaren Racing
Norris took the time after being medically cleared from the hospital to explain the causes of his crash. While his boss, Team Principal Andrea Stella, blamed Norris’ crash on a bump on the Las Vegas strip that needs to be fixed for next year, Norris said that it wasn’t just the bump on the road, but terrible timing of a few bad situations all into one.
“A combination of things, The obvious one being there is quite a big bump there. Then cold tyres, so therefore lower ride heights than what you normally running with.
“The first time following a lot of cars through all of this, you have even less downforce than what you already have. And then a couple of other little things in the background that just made this bump have a bigger effect than what it normally has.
“I think I’ve somehow must have caught it at a worse angle than normal. I always knew there was a bump there.
“But just for some reason, the effects of it on this one lap seemed a lot bigger than what it had done previously. So just a little bit unlucky at the same time.”
When Norris was asked about changing the track for next year to make sure a crash like his does not happen again, he reitterated that the bump was not the primary cause, and that any other mix of circumstances could have caused the crash another time.
“Like I said, it was a combination of things. So for all of those things to happen again and to cause this is quite rare. Probably if I tried to drive everything the same now, it’s not a guarantee that it would happen again.
“So if I was 30 centimetres to the right or to the left, maybe it would be different. If there was one less car ahead of me would have been different. If I clipped the battery a little bit earlier it would have been different. There’s so many different circumstances.
“I think the track is okay. It’s not the best track I’ve ever driven, if it was just higher grip. I think the tarmac made it a lot worse than what every driver would have wanted.”
When he was sent to the hospital, Norris mentioned that he was always fine, but understood the check-ups that needed to be done. He simply needed to catch his breath.
Photo Credit: McLaren Racing
“Honestly, I was never bad. They just wanted to do a lot of check-ups, kind of the new norm nowadays, it seems. But I was fine.
“I was winded, that was probably what you heard on the radio and stuff when I had the impact, I breathed in or breathed out at the wrong time, and it just kind of caught me off guard a little bit.
“It happened quite quickly. Still a decent impact. But I was fine, I never struggled with anything. I was more just frustrated that I was out of the race in Vegas so early on. So it was more just a shame. But I was fine.
“I’ve been advised ever since to just chill out and relax for a few days. But I was good, since I pretty much jumped out the car, a little shaken at first, but just because it caught me by surprise so much, what happened, But then all good after that.”
