Revealed: The shocking performance drop in late Lando Norris drama

Lando Norris finished in second position at the Chinese GP but suffered a brake problem that put his position under great threat from George Russell in the final three laps.

And Norris’ telemetry data reveals that the problem with the brake pedal experienced by the papaya team driver worsened as the laps went on.

Chinese Grand Prix: What happened to Lando Norris in the final laps

Apparently, the pedal was moving more and more towards the bottom of its neutral position, making it harder for Lando Norris to begin the braking action, even though he wasn’t losing brake power as his race engineer told him over the radio. This forced him to use the lift and coast technique to rely on engine braking and avoid making the issue worse, allowing him to finish the race.

Before analysing this and quantifying the time losses caused by the brake issue, it is necessary to also examine the context leading up to Norris’ nightmare final three laps.

First of all, the British driver had a sublime start, overtaking Russell by finding great grip on the outside racing line through Turn 1.

From that point on, until the moment of the first and only pit stop for the top five finishers, Norris maintained a constant gap to Oscar Piastri, the race leader, and to Russell, who showed strong pace in the Mercedes during the Chinese Grand Prix.

Taking advantage of his strong pace and the fact that Norris couldn’t defend from an attack on the same lap Piastri would pit, Russell and Mercedes launched an undercut attack that proved successful against Lando, who stopped one lap later at the end of Lap 15.

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However, the stronger pace of the MCL39 and Norris on the hard tyre allowed him to recover to virtual P2 in just three laps with another great overtake on Russell.

From there, the race became a tyre management game between both McLarens, with constant give and take, but maintaining an identical average pace. Russell couldn’t keep up with the pace of Norris and Piastri and started to fall behind lap after lap, trying to preserve his tyres.

But then, after setting his personal best lap on the hard tyre with a tyre life of 38 laps on Lap 53, the drama arrived for Lando Norris. After a very strong Sector 1, where he closed the gap to Piastri by three tenths down to +2.4s and increased his gap to Russell to +9.1s, in Sector 2 his brake pedal started to move backwards.

We can clearly see that it is from the heavy braking zone of Turn 14 where this issue becomes truly visible. In this final sector of Lap 54 alone, Norris lost +1.2s to both Piastri and Russell.

And the problem got worse, as Norris explained to his engineer, who confirmed and fed back the symptoms. Norris began to use lift and coast to avoid having to press the pedal excessively to generate the same braking power and to directly avoid the issue potentially causing him to retire from the race.

To quantify the true nightmare Norris went through, we must compare Lap 53 – before the braking system issue – with the final lap, to understand how big the time losses were and how the British driver managed to handle it to bring the car home.

Between the two laps there is a time delta of +3.964s. This comparison is not only interesting in terms of speed trace. It is even more so when we look at throttle and brake telemetry for these two laps.

As we can see, the red trace corresponding to Lap 56 – when the brake pedal issue was at its most critical – shows an increase in the use of the lift and coast technique to make greater use of engine braking and depend less on the braking power of the brake system.

In quantitative terms, at Turn 1, on Lap 53 – his personal best lap of the race just before the issue – Norris stayed on full throttle for 80.95m longer before starting to apply the brakes.

But the difference is even more surprising in the heavy braking zone of Turn 14. On the final lap, Norris lifted off 120.73m earlier in the 4367.16m distance on Lap 56 compared to the 4887.89m of Lap 53.

We can see the same in the brake telemetry. At Turn 1, Norris delayed his maximum brake application by 23.41m compared to Lap 53, losing +0.440s. And again, at the critical Turn 14, he delayed it by as much as 109.77m, losing +0.818s. However, the point where he lost the most time was at Turn 11, where he lost +0.917s in that corner alone compared to his personal best lap.

Another very interesting piece of telemetry data is that there are 10 more instances of 100% brake usage recorded on lap 56 compared to lap 53, and eight more instances recorded with the throttle fully lifted.

An incredible difference that undoubtedly put him under pressure from Russell, losing more than 7.5 seconds to the Mercedes driver in the final three laps.

Despite this, Norris managed to finish the race with just over a one-second gap to Russell. One more lap would have been fatal even to keep his podium hopes alive with Max Verstappen, who smelled blood, going all out as the fastest driver on the grid in the final three laps of the Chinese GP.

Norris leaves Shanghai retaining his title as leader of the World Championship with an eight-point advantage over the Red Bull driver, and McLaren with a 21-point margin over Mercedes in the Constructors’ Championship.

Despite being a step behind Piastri all weekend, Norris can be happy to have saved a very difficult situation. He kept a cool head to score a very valuable 18 points.