McLaren reveal double-stack confusion behind Canada disappointment

McLaren

McLaren reveal double-stack confusion behind Canada disappointment

McLaren failed to score points for only the third time this year

Sam Hall

Wednesday 22 June 2022 13:50 Updated: 13:58

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl has revealed that a communication issue "snowballed" to cause the chaotic double-stack pit stop which hampered Lando Norris' Canadian Grand Prix.

Under a second virtual safety car period on lap 20 in Montreal, McLaren pitted both Norris and team-mate Daniel Ricciardo.

But an issue on Ricciardo's right front caused his stop to take 6.3 seconds, meaning that Norris was forced to queue behind the Australian as he waited to be serviced.

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Things went from bad to worse for the Briton as confusion reigned with a medium tyre fitted bolted onto the left front of his McLaren while the remaining mechanics waited for tyres to emerge from the garage.

The net result was a 19-second stop with hard tyres eventually fitted.

Asked to explain what had gone so badly wrong for McLaren, Seidl said: "Obviously, it was a disappointing weekend for various reasons - reliability issues, operational issues in the race, but also in terms of our pace and where we want to be.

"On the operational side, during the pit stop today, we had a communications issue that in the end snowballed into the issue that we saw. It is something that we need to analyse to come back stronger."

McLaren to "review internally"

With Ricciardo finishing 11th and Norris 15th, this was McLaren's third failure to register a point so far in 2022 - adding to the disastrous season opener in Bahrain and then Miami.

Asked to elaborate further on what had caused the problems in Canada, Seidl refused to add further detail.

"I don't want to go too much into the detail because that is something that we have to review internally as a team, what went wrong there," explained Seidl.

"As I said before, in the end, it was down to a communications issue within the team and that was causing the delays."