McLaren confirms Chinese GP issues Mercedes-related, but doesn't blame the brand

McLaren Formula 1 team boss Andrea Stella says the issues that stopped Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri from starting the Chinese Grand Prix were Mercedes-related, but isn't blaming the marque.

Reigning world champion Lando Norris’s car didn’t get out of the garage to go to the grid on Sunday, and despite frantic efforts from the team, the issue could not be resolved.

Oscar Piastri made it to the grid, but his car could then not be fired up prior to the formation lap.

He was pushed back to his McLaren garage, his fault could also not be rectified, which meant that the Australian failed to start for the second grand prix in a row.

The initial analysis confirmed that both problems were on the Mercedes side, but Stella stressed that McLaren had accepted the twin failures as an overall team issue, rather than blaming its power unit partner.

“We will review, together with HPP [High Performance Powertrains], the reason for these faults,” said Stella. “And like I've said to everyone in the team and to HPP, we go as a one team.

"And as a one team we will face this disappointing day, and we will make sure that it doesn't happen again in the future.”

Two different power unit issues "unusual" 

Stella explained that in the case of Norris there was a communication issue with the electrical side of the PU.

“Obviously a disappointing day, quite frustrating,” he said. “Because we go racing to be on track, and today we saw two McLarens in the garage while the other cars were racing.

“What happened today is that on Lando's car in preparation for the laps to the grid, we saw that there were problems with the electrical side of the power unit. We couldn't communicate with this component.

“We tried to rectify the problem. We tried to change as many parts as possible without having to change that part specifically, because it would take a long time, and couldn't have made it to the start of the race.

"But there was no way to fix the problem, and Lando's car was simply just not being conditioned to leave the garage.”

“We attempted to change the ECU because while we were having no communication with the battery, changing the ECU takes just a few minutes.

"We hypothesised that it could have been the ECU, so we went for the ECU change, but it did not make a difference.”

Piastri, meanwhile, had a different issue, albeit in the same electrical area.

“On Oscar's side, the car was able to go to the grid with no issues at all,” said Stella.

“But once on the grid, the car wouldn't fire up again in a similar manner to Lando, but actually on Oscar’s side, it was easier to diagnose the problem, and it appears to be a problem with the same power unit component on the electrical side, but a problem of a different nature.”

Stella conceded that it was highly unusual to have two such serious but seemingly unrelated problems occur concurrently.

“It's quite exceptional and uncharacteristic that you have two terminal problems pretty much at the same time on the same component,” he said. “Which in this case is on the electrical side of the power unit.”

"Obviously this is an area of the car which is not under McLaren's control, so we rely entirely on what is reported by HPP, and we trust completely their report.

“And according to their report at the moment, the two problems are of a different nature. So it looks like it's just coincidence that they happened at the same time, at the same grand prix, and they were both of a terminal nature.”

Asked by Crash.net if there was any chance that the issues could be related to the interface with the car he said: "So at the moment, it doesn't look like that is the case, but like I say, we have gone only that far in terms of being able to diagnose and inspect parts.

“Once we go a little bit deeper, we will able to we will be able to have a more comprehensive assessment, and see if there's anything that was actually on the McLaren side."

In its initial analysis, Mercedes could not ascertain why the problems occurred.

"At the moment, these issues are understood in terms of what the problem is, but they are not fully understood in terms of the root cause.

“This will require inspection, physical inspection, because, from the data we had available, or from an superficial external inspection, there's nothing that is pointing at a specific, more detailed, let me say, root cause, compared to generically saying that the problem is in a certain area.”