Could Norris have won Piastri's Chinese GP without McLaren's late brake issue?

The post-race press conferences for every McLaren Formula 1 win since Miami 2024 have been revealing.

From the relief flooding from Lando Norris’s exuberance in the bowels of the Hard Rock Stadium last May, to the awkwardness between the two McLaren drivers after Oscar Piastri’s maiden grand prix triumph in Hungary. And then there were the punchy celebrations of title success and season-opener victory in Abu Dhabi last year and Australia of this.

On the second floor of the giant Shanghai main grandstand, the light outside was fading fast. What had been the first consistently sunny, smog-less Chinese GP weekend in years had ended with an overcast race, with spots of rain falling in the paddock in the aftermath of Piastri’s third victory.

But, sat alongside the race winner, Norris seemed content with second.

This had more to do with the massive turnaround of his weekend – both aided and obstructed by the sprint weekend format.

But, could the driver who’d said he had no pace even while pushing flatout in the first contest have won the main race?

What was behind Piastri’s “most complete” F1 weekend yet, where Norris struggled

“Saying I struggled a little bit last year is being pretty nice,” was how Piastri reacted when Autosport informed him of McLaren team boss Andrea Stella explaining his year-on-year progress in Shanghai in the aftermath of this triumph.

Here in 2024, the Australian had struggled in the pack and picked up damage. He and Stella then sat together after that event – where Norris was second and threatening Red Bull even before McLaren massively updated the MCL38 – and were “scratching our heads a little bit”, per the Italian.

Piastri put in arguably the best performance of his F1 career to date

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

They considered how Piastri might improve in front-limited contests, such as this. And that paid Piastri back handsomely in 2025.

Last year, the many long corners of the Shanghai layout hadn’t impacted Norris as they would this season – as the bitumen paint slathered on the course ahead of China’s return to the F1 calendar erased the typical front graining issue of this place.

That comes with a big understeer challenge stemming from the track’s long corners. This time around, Piastri’s work post-China 2024 and his natural driving style combined with the resurfaced track to make him the driver to beat for 2025’s main Shanghai contest.

"Oscar was having less graining than Lando, so Lando needed to pick up something from Oscar" Andrea Stella

Piastri had already been the lead McLaren driver as his smooth, calm and precise style meant he could cope with the understeer Norris “almost hates as much as brakes not working”.

Norris’s driving style is higher energy overall, which loads up the fronts considerably. Not a good thing here.

It meant Piastri was at less risk of overstressing the delicate C4 softs in GP qualifying, where McLaren getting a more typical warm-up-lap-to-flying-effort run plan was one of the factors that put it back at the front of the pack after Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton had edged sprint qualifying.

“For me it’s been very satisfying to have probably my most complete weekend in F1 this weekend be at a track I struggled the most at last year,” Piastri would later say.

The Australian also starred on Saturday with second place in the sprint and then pole position for the grand prix

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

The relaid track meant corner entry speeds were even higher, so the front-left tyres were really suffering in the shorter contest Hamilton dominated – where the value of leading and being without the dirty air was invaluable to keeping the mediums alive.

This was even around Pirelli upping the minimum tyre pressures from 26.5psi for the fronts to 27.5psi pre-sprint.

The other aspect to the severe graining problem was to try and avoid pushing the tyres too hard, too early in the Turns 1-2-3-4 and Turns 11-12-13 ‘snails’ – as the race organiser describes them.

Once the sprint’s parc ferme restrictions had been lifted, the teams were able to adjust car mechanical balance via anti-roll bar and such tweaks, as well as shifting aero balances towards the rear axle.

And then there was how the hard tyres – a new C2 construction for 2025 – would be run for the first time all weekend in the GP. But, above all else, post-sprint the drivers also finally had a proper long run to crunch through with their engineers, around the compressed FP1 running of the sprint format.

“Oscar was having less graining than Lando, so Lando needed to pick up something from Oscar,” Stella said of how Norris looked at his team-mate’s approach to corner entry and tyre management overall.

“And there were a few things that Oscar picked from Lando, but to be honest this is something I've said in Australia as well – the importance of having two drivers of this very high level is the fact that the information one can take from the other is valid information.”

Stella says McLaren is benefitting from two strong drivers as team-mates

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

How the Shanghai GP played out

Around all the changes, the start was still critical to the main race’s outcome, with Mercedes driver George Russell splitting the McLarens at the head of the pack.

He got the best overall start of the top three and looked to Piastri’s inside as the first snail’s start was reached by the snarling pack. This was to be Russell’s undoing, however, as the polesitter coming across pinched the Mercedes on the inside and Norris powered around the outside to run second.

He then chased Piastri across the leader’s 14-lap opening stint – never falling below 2.1s even with the dirty air, before this really came to bear just before the stops and Norris dropped to 2.5s off.

When Piastri pitted to swap the starting mediums for hards, Russell did likewise – and here Norris’s initial struggles with the understeer and the new track surface bit, as it meant he was staying out for an extra tour.

It became clear that the hard “was a much better tyre than everyone expected” – per Piastri – and this combined with how the extra rubber going down increased the track evolution factor significantly

When he rejoined, having to hold back through the circuit’s opening corners meant Russell jumped back ahead, as they both fell upon the yet-to-pit Aston Martin of Lance Stroll. Norris was soon by the Aston and was then immediately in DRS range to Russell ahead. He got by with a thrilling run into Turn 1 on lap 18, by which point Piastri was 3.1s up the road.
The contest appeared settled, only to change considerably over the following laps.

First, it became clear that the hard “was a much better tyre than everyone expected” – per Piastri – and this combined with how the extra rubber going down increased the track evolution factor significantly. The rubber just wasn’t tearing and graining as it had been before and so a one-stopper became possible.

“If you look at the temperature, it was not really changing,” Pirelli motorsport boss, Mario Isola, told Autosport regarding how the clouds had built up over the track just after the race start. “Even with the cloud, it didn't make that much difference.”

Norris kept pace with Piastri over the opening stint on the mediums, before closing in with the hards

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Around all this, Norris started to close on Piastri as they stretched the second stint to well north of 30 laps. By contrast, the mediums used for the 19-lap sprint had been close to 100% wear on some cars, per Pirelli’s findings.

With a streak of fastest laps and personal best efforts as the middle phase commenced, Norris was finally getting the upper hand in the middle sector – where all weekend Piastri had been dominant. The handful of tenths were suddenly falling Norris’s way, combining with how he’d generally been stronger in sector one.

The gap, which had got as high as 4.3s on lap 21, fell to 2.4s, but then gradually grew again as Piastri also lifted his pace. McLaren had ordered the leader to push on too because “as a team, we needed to open more gaps on Russell and the Ferraris”, per Stella.

“Because for a long time they were within undercut and today we saw that, as soon as you pit, you can go like two-three seconds faster,” he added.

Once they were clear to the tune of five seconds from Norris to Russell on lap 36, Stella and co allowed their drivers to “pick up the pace” as they saw fit to decide the race.

But on lap 48, Norris first reported his brake pedal “going long” – an issue McLaren had spotted in its data since “a lot earlier and they knew it was going to be a problem”, per Norris. “I think the team were hiding it from me,” he continued.

The problem was a leak in one of the MCL39’s components, although Stella said this was not in “the brake line” and he didn’t want to give any more details immediately post-race “for IP reasons”.

Norris was forced to limit his peak brake pressure application - which, judging by each ever-tenser Will Joseph reminder over team radio, he was barely doing. Indeed, Piastri’s gap came down to 3.0s with three tours left.

The brake issue denied Norris a late attack on Piastri

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Here, though, Norris was forced to accept the issue had “got critical in the last five laps”. He added much more lift-and-coast into every major braking zone and so his lap times increased by three seconds to the flag. Piastri’s lead therefore ballooned to a final 9.7s, while Russell closed back to 1.3s behind Norris.

McLaren’s 50th GP 1-2 secure, but could Norris have won?

Piastri’s lap times over the unexpectedly long second stint were consistent in the 1m36s, even as Norris pressed on with a streak of times in the high 1m35s before his brake issue.

Stella insisted afterwards that the eventual winner had taken the same tyre management strategy as his team-mate for the elongated second stint on the hards.

“Lando wanted to save some tyres to see if he could attack Oscar in the final part of the race,” Stella explained. “I think Oscar was doing pretty much the same. Like, ‘let's see if in case Lando attacks I want to have a budget of tyres [to respond]’.”

"I was nervous I was going to struggle just as badly [as in the sprint], honestly. But very satisfied to know how much I've improved from a car point of view, from a driving point of view" Lando Norris

But it was what Stella wasn’t saying when asked if McLaren would’ve allowed racing to the finish that provided the biggest clue as to what might’ve occurred had Norris’s brake issue not struck.

Instead of taking the easy route to shut down the line of questioning, Stella only repeated his position that “we would have had a very interesting final part of the race”.

In any case, Norris was clearly satisfied with the result. Having been so far off in the sprint, where he finished eighth, he leaves with a one-point larger championship lead (eight, over Max Verstappen) than he’d had arriving from Melbourne.

“It was a much better race than I was thinking I was going to have,” he concluded in the post-race press conference. “I was not confident one bit. I was nervous I was going to struggle just as badly [as in the sprint], honestly. But very satisfied to know how much I've improved from a car point of view, from a driving point of view. Today was a much stronger day, so I'm more satisfied to know I've got answers for my struggles and that makes me happy. But I'm of course happier for the 1-2 for the team.”

Can anyone catch McLaren next time out in Japan?

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images