But Norris dropped whole seconds in the last four laps, clearly managing some sort of issue. It turned out to be plank wear. Teams have load sensors in the floor and the aggregation of the impact loads allows them to infer what the plank wear will be. The plank is 10mm deep and must not be less than 9mm at the end of the race. Norris’s extensive lift-and-coasting towards the end of the race clearly alerted the FIA and his car plus the sister McLaren of Piastri were picked out for plank measurements. That on Norris’s car was found to be below the minimum on both the front and rear right-hand side. Piastri’s was slightly less worn – but still below the minimum – on the right-hand side and in addition on the left-front measuring point. The planks of the remaining top 10 cars were subsequently checked and found to be in order.
Norris’s disqualification moved Russell up a place to second in the official results. He’d ran in that position for all of the first stint before pitting to attempt an undercut on Verstappen. Stopping eight laps later, the Red Bull exited only just in front of the Mercedes after an untypically slow (3sec) stop. In those eight laps Russell had pushed on with his new hard-compound tyres and as Verstappen’s rubber came up to temperature on the out-lap Russell was aggressively into his slipstream. The lap after, he dropped back and continued to fall further away. That nine-lap charge before the new tyre temperatures had stabilised had damaged the rubber. He was soon losing so much time that Norris was able to catch and pass him, the McLaren going by under DRS on lap 34 and pulling quickly away.
Russell bided his time behind Verstappen in the first stint
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For a time Norris threw everything at closing down the gap to Verstappen, but a multiple lap response from the world champion had already taken the sting out of the contest even before Norris’s dramatic loss of pace in the last few laps.
The double McLaren disqualification moved Kimi Antonelli up to an official third place. He was fourth across the line, having fended off Piastri for all the latter’s second stint. But he was taking a 5sec penalty for having crept a few millimetres before the lights changed and so was fifth in the provisional results before his two-place promotion. His was a remarkable drive in that he effectively did the whole race on a single set of hard tyres, having pitted on lap two (under a VSC) to be rid of the original softs. Not only did he make up enough places and maintain a good enough pace to be ahead of Piastri, Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz and Isack Hadjar after they’d stopped, but he kept up that pace and kept himself out of their passing reach until the end. He even made a late push which pulled him more than 5sec clear of Leclerc.
Leclerc had opted for a bigger rear wing on the Ferrari before qualifying on the basis of the rain forecast. Even so he started way back in ninth, the car just not competitive in the wet. But in the dry of race day – just as in the first day practices — he was quick. Quick enough to pass Hadjar and Piastri in quick succession with perfectly timed moves from a long way back into Turn 14 — repeats of what he did there last year to Sergio Perez. So even though he overcut himself past Carlos Sainz’s Williams, it was galling for him when McLaren undercut Piastri back ahead of him at the stops. In the second stint Piastri had the benefit of DRS in the tow of Antonelli, making it impossible for Leclerc to pass as the drag of the big wing limited his end-of-straight speed.
Leclerc passed Hadjar, but big wing would hamper his race
Grand Prix Photo
Leclerc’s sixth across the line (ahead of Sainz and Hadjar), an official fourth, is unlikely to have been enough to relieve the pressure mounting on the team. Lewis Hamilton, after failing to take the other Ferrari out of Q1, endured a lacklustre race to tenth, falling away from Nico Hulkenberg’s Sauber in the second stint.
For a few minutes after the race, Norris was somewhat disappointed he’d not won the race but at least had the consolation that Max Verstappen had no realistic chance of catching him. Then even that solace was gone.
This one is going to the wire.