Norris's MCL40 stalls at Monaco; McLaren probes electrical fault
McLaren’s Monaco practice was dominated by reliability and setup headaches after Lando Norris suffered an electrical shutdown that left his MCL40 stranded at the Nouvelle Chicane, costing him roughly 45 minutes of running and a 19th-place classification. McLaren confirmed the stoppage was caused by an electrical fault that engineers had not yet isolated, and Norris watched the remainder of FP2 from the pit wall, saying, “The car simply turned off.” The stoppage forced Oscar Piastri to be McLaren’s sole runner for much of the session and prompted a brief Virtual Safety Car period. The running exposed a roughly one-second pace deficit to the frontrunners. Oscar Piastri finished seventh in FP2, about 1.0 to 1.062 seconds behind the session benchmark of 1:13.026 set by Lewis Hamilton, after the team said it had trimmed an earlier gap of around 1.5 seconds. McLaren reported the MCL40 looked more competitive through sectors two and three but struggled in the first sector, a shortfall the team linked to tyre warm-up and temperature. Chief technical officer Rob Marshall and Piastri said they were optimistic about finding overnight improvements, but Piastri also said the squad had “no great ideas” for an immediate fix. McLaren listed diagnosing the electrical fault and fine-tuning temperature and balance as immediate priorities, and the team brought a six-piece upgrade package to Monaco, including a radical rear winglet. The session underlined how much work McLaren faces before qualifying, as Ferrari set the pace on Friday with Hamilton’s 1:13.026 and Charles Leclerc 0.111 seconds adrift, and running was repeatedly interrupted by incidents including Sergio Perez’s front-right brake fire and crashes that sent other cars to the garage. The team also carried recent reliability concerns into Monaco after Andrea Stella said separate overheating and gearbox failures had forced Norris out in Montreal, and McLaren said it would focus on repairing the electrical issue and extracting performance from the upgrade package ahead of the decisive sessions.
