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Lando Norris’s issue in the second part of French Grand Prix qualifying was a lack of fuel in his McLaren Formula 1 car.
Norris was preparing for his final run in Q2 when he was instructed to pit and told he would be told why later.
It left him vulnerable to being knocked out of the second part of qualifying but his first lap was good enough to get him through into the top-10 shootout.
Norris joked afterwards that McLaren “thought I was going to go P1 and they didn’t want to look that good” but the real reason was a fuelling issue that meant he had to cancel his final run in order to get the car back into the garage.
“We had an issue with getting the fuel in for his final run, and that’s why we had to abort the run in order to make sure we could get the car back,” said McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl.
“It’s something we analyse at the moment, what happened in detail, to make sure that doesn’t happen again.
“Luckily, his first lap that he put in Q2 was enough to progress to Q3 so it didn’t affect really qualifying but that’s something we need to be on top of.”
Norris was ultimately two tenths clear of the knockout places in Q2.
He said he felt fortunate to progress in the circumstances as it was “surprising” that his first run was enough.
“The track definitely improved a little bit,” said Norris, who will start the race eighth. “I did a good enough lap on that first run and I didn’t miss out from not getting my second run in.
“Maybe not the cleanest of days for us. A couple of mistakes here and there.
“But I think P8 was as good as we could do. The others were a little bit too far ahead.”
