Norris' race botched by pneumatic pressure leak

Lando Norris' opening race of 2023 in Bahrain quickly turned into pit stop practice for his McLaren mechanics following a pneumatic pressure leak on his car's power unit.

On Saturday, Norris had qualified just outside the top-ten, which is where the Briton ran during the first ten laps of Sunday's race at Sakhir.

But that was as good as it got for the McLaren driver whose evening went downhill from there on the back of an unsolvable mechanical issue.

"Lando had a pneumatic pressure leak on the power unit side," explained McLaren team boss Andrea Stella. "It required him to pit every ten laps to recharge the system."

Despite visiting the pitlane more times than he cared to remember, Norris at least took away one positive from his Bahrain Grand Prix.

"I think the best thing was the mechanics had a lot of pit-stop practice!" he said. "So that's the biggest positive of today."

On a more serious note, the McLaren charger reckoned that a point or two would have perhaps been in order had his car's engine been spared its pneumatic ordeal.

"I think at the start I made up a few positions, and then we just had problems from Turn 1 onwards, basically," Norris said.

"[There were] pneumatic problems and just various other issues, which just put us out of the race more and more, pitting every 10 laps.

"I think the pace was actually okayish today as well," he added.

"I think we could have scored a point today at least, so [it's] a shame we had the problems that we did."

• Read also: F1i's Driver Ratings for the 2023 Bahrain GP

On the other side of the McLaren garage, an electrical issue put paid to Oscar Piastri's efforts on his Grand Prix debut after just 13 laps.

Despite the Woking-based outfit's depressing weekend, Norris did his best to uphold his team's morale.

"it's very important," he explained. "It's part of my job, really, I guess more so now than ever. There's no reason why they should be downbeat.

"The main thing is we should have scored points. That was our objective today with a car that we know is not that competitive.

"The team know that. If we fix the issue, we should be fine."

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