McLaren could still face a race of significant brake management in the Formula 1 season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix if its brakes fix hasn’t been enough, warns Lando Norris.
The team’s second pre-season test was marred by constant brake overheating, limiting how much long or high-fuel running it could do, and it warned at the time that it would not be able to solve the problem until the race weekend.
Modifications spotted in the McLaren garage on Thursday included a reshaped brake cooling duct with a series of narrowly-spaced dividers, as well as what appears to be a slightly larger brake drum.
“We’ll see in a few hours’ time,” Norris replied when asked by The Race about his expectations for McLaren’s fixes.
“The team’s done an excellent job in trying to get as many parts here as possible, things to fix those problems.
“But to a certain extent we don’t know how well they’re going to work. We are literally going to have to put them on the car and go out and drive with them to understand just how good they are and whether it’s enough or too much. Preferably it’s on the side of too much and we can come back and make modifications from there.
“There could be a chance of either: it could be a perfect race with no issues, and of course that’s the ideal world, or it could be a race where we have to still manage many things. We don’t know just yet and we have to see when we get out on track.”
McLaren put the initial problem down to a cooling miscalculation with roots in underestimating the pace of the 2022 F1 cars.
At first, it could only do four consecutive ‘push’ laps, and even when its modified parts arrived later in the test it could only extend those runs to 10 flying laps, making a race distance test impossible.
Norris conducted the Bahrain test alone as team-mate Daniel Ricciardo was sidelined with COVID-19.
Ricciardo said Norris was “giving me the feedback” about the brake issues.
“I know pretty much every day of the test there were modifications happening and on day three there was a good step of progress made,” said Ricciardo, who expects it will be practice two before McLaren really gets a read on its situation with longer runs.
“Since then we’ve had some more modifications to trial today. We’re in a confident place but there may still be some management.”
