McLaren has broken its silence, revealing the specific technical failure that led to the team's devastating double disqualification from the Las Vegas Grand Prix. The announcement comes just days before the season's penultimate race in Qatar, where the team is desperate to secure crucial championship points.
The Root Cause: Unexpected and Severe Porpoising
Speaking ahead of the Qatar Grand Prix, McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella provided a detailed explanation for the scandal. He confirmed that the disqualifications of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were a direct result of excessive plank wear on the cars' undersides.
Stella pinpointed the culprit as an "unexpected occurrence of extensive porpoising." This phenomenon, which causes the car to bounce violently vertically, forced the chassis to repeatedly strike the track surface, sanding down the mandatory wooden plank beyond the legal limit.
Crucially, Stella emphasised that this severe porpoising was not anticipated. "The level of porpoising was exacerbated by the conditions in which the car operated during the race, and it was not anticipated based on what we had seen in practice," he stated. The team had even added a safety margin to the car's ride height for the race, but this precaution was rendered useless by the violent oscillations.
Championship Ramifications and Stella's Reassurance
The consequences of the disqualification were immediate and severe for McLaren's title hopes. Lando Norris, who originally finished second on the track, now sees his championship lead over Red Bull's Max Verstappen slashed to a precarious 24 points.
His teammate, Oscar Piastri, who was stripped of his fifth-place finish, is now level on points with Verstappen. The Australian driver has struggled to outscore his main rivals in the last seven race weekends, making the lost points in Vegas particularly painful.
However, Stella moved quickly to allay fears of a repeat performance at the Lusail International Circuit in Qatar. He explained that the issues were unique to the Las Vegas track. "The conditions we experienced last weekend... are very specific to the operating window of the car in Vegas and the circuit characteristics," he said.
Looking Ahead: Confidence for Qatar and Abu Dhabi
With Qatar and the final race in Abu Dhabi featuring more traditional circuit layouts, the McLaren boss expressed confidence in the team's standard procedures. "We have a well-established and consolidated way of setting up the car, and we are confident that this will lead us to an optimal plan for the coming races," Stella affirmed.
Despite the setback, the team is treating the incident as a valuable, if costly, lesson. Stella concluded that the Las Vegas ordeal has provided "useful information about the operating window of the car and the porpoising regime," knowledge that will be applied to future car development. All eyes will now be on the McLaren garage in Qatar to see if they can convert this hard-learned lesson into a clean and points-heavy weekend.
