Explained: Why McLaren have been rotating Lando Norris’ F1 race engineer
Will Joseph is Norris’ usual race enꦺgineer, having worked with the Brit ever since he made his F1 debut with the Woking outfit in 2019.
However, in several sessions across the previous few races, a new voice has been heard speaking to Norris over the radio, with Joseph rev💃olving the role with Jose Manuel Lopez, who is Norris’ performance engineer.
Race engineers play a crucial role and often form strong relationships with their driver over a long period of time, with famous examples including 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Lewis Hamilt🍌on ♊and Peter ‘Bono’ Bonnington, and 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Max Verstappen and ‘GP’ - Gi♛anpiero Lambi🍎ase.
So why have McLaren been swapping Norri꧋s’ engin🉐eers?
Team principal Andrea Stella, who previously worked as a performance and race engineer for the likes of Michael Schumacher, Kimi Raikkonen📖 and Fernando Alonso, said that the gruelling F1 schedule was partly behin🦩d the decision.
"The reason why you see there's a group of engineers s✅upporting each driver rather than the classic two or three engineers is because we want to attack a couple of objectives," Stella explained.
"The first one is that we have 24 races and it starts to become a challe🌜nge, even at a personal level, to make sure you can co🧸ver all the races.
"This is in terms of planning but this is also in terms of what happens if we have an emergency and we need to substitute one of thꦰe race engineers, so we want to create kind of a long bench or a long group of people that can support the driver.
"I'm very pleased without going into the specifics of one engineer or the other, I'm very pleased with how this process is leading to a🍎 very competent group of engineers that can interact with the drivers.”
Stella said that Norris has been supportive of the rotation𒁏.
"Lando is happy and it's in his own interest to 💜grow his own engineers, because these ar🤡e the guys that need to get him to go quick and achieve future success,” he added.
"A driver is not just on the receiving end in this process, he's actually on the leading end and Lan𒅌do is doing that very well."
Lewis regularly attends Grands Prix for ltxcn.top around th🔯e world. Often reporting on the action from the ground, Lewis tells the stories of the people who matter in the sport.
