Lando Norris has revealed that his retirement from the Monaco Grand Prix was caused by a power unit issue that appeared without any major warning signs and progressively worsened over the course of the race, eventually forcing him to pull over and retire.
The reigning world champion started from eighth position on the grid and, in the early stages of the race, remained behind Pierre Gasly. From the opening laps, however, the British driver had to deal with engine irregularities that gradually became more severe until they led to his retirement. For Norris, this marks the second consecutive retirement caused by similar technical problems, after the one he suffered at the Canadian Grand Prix.
Speaking after the race, the McLaren driver explained how the issue developed during the event: “There were some problems at the beginning, then others emerged in the middle of the race. I don’t know if they were all connected or not. In the end we had to retire the car, so there’s not much else to say.”
Before retiring in the closing stages of the race, Norris had also reported strange noises coming from the power unit around lap 45. McLaren attempted to intervene by changing some settings in an effort to solve the problem, but the result was the opposite.
“Yes, I was hearing different noises coming from the engine, the turbo and the battery,” Norris explained. “We tried to fix the situation, but we only made things worse. So we went back to the previous settings: the problems were still there, but it felt like we just had to live with them. In the end, though, we were forced to retire.”
After undoing the changes made during the race, the team tried to manage the issue until the chequered flag, but the failure proved too severe, ultimately ending the British driver’s race prematurely.
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