The FIA has referred McLaren to the stewards at the Monaco Grand Prix after an “alleged technical infringement” was flagged on Lando Norris’s car following his stoppage in Friday’s second practice.
Norris, the reigning world champion, ground to a halt at the Nouvelle chicane during FP2, triggering a Virtual Safety Car as marshals moved to clear the MCL40. It was that recovery process — not the stoppage itself — that drew the attention of FIA Formula 1 technical delegate Manuel Leal.
In a note sent to the stewards, Leal reported that when car 01 stopped on circuit, marshals pressed the CDS button, only for it to become apparent the system “was not working as required” under Article C9.3 of the Formula 1 regulations. The matter has been formally referred for stewarding consideration.
Norris and a McLaren representative have been summoned for a hearing at 19:00 local time on Friday.
While the FIA’s wording points squarely at a regulatory compliance question, McLaren’s immediate focus earlier in the day was simply understanding why the car stopped in the first place. Chief technical officer Rob Marshall said the team was still in the dark on the root cause, describing it as an electrical issue that effectively shut the car down.
“The car shut down. We don’t know why, an electrical fault of some kind,” Marshall explained. “We don’t know what the root cause is, but we do know that it stopped the car and that was that.”
Monaco is one of the worst places on the calendar to have any kind of systems failure — the track’s narrow confines turn even a routine stoppage into a logistical headache — and the marshal difficulty clearing Norris’s car only heightened the spotlight on what should’ve been a standard procedure.
The referral also makes it a messy start to the weekend, at least administratively, for Norris. It’s the second time he’s been on the stewards’ radar in Monte Carlo: earlier on Friday, Norris and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc were both summoned after arriving late to Thursday’s FIA press conference. McLaren and Ferrari received suspended fines of €5,000 for those breaches.
On-track, the FP2 order offered McLaren little comfort. Oscar Piastri ended the session classified seventh, a full second off the pace set by Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari.
For Norris, the immediate priority will be getting the car’s underlying issue understood and resolved in time for qualifying — but first McLaren must satisfy the stewards that the CDS requirements were met, or explain why they weren’t. In a weekend where centimetres decide everything, paperwork and procedures have become an unwelcome subplot.
