Lando Norris and McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri have been disqualified from the Las Vegas Grand Prix for technical infringements.
The skid blocks on both cars were found after the race to be less than the minimum depth allowed in the rules.
Norris, who finished second to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, is now 24 points ahead of both the Dutchman and Piastri going into the penultimate race of the season in Qatar next weekend.
The Briton, 26, will still win the drivers’ title in Qatar with a round to spare if he earns two more points than both Verstappen and Piastri over the course of the weekend.
There are a maximum of 58 points available in the final two grands prix with Qatar being a sprint event.
After Qatar, the final race follows in Abu Dhabi on 7 December.
Verstappen has won the past four drivers’ championships, while Norris and Piastri are both seeking their first.
Norris’ disqualification lifts Mercedes drivers George Russell and Kimi Antonelli into second and third respectively in Vegas.
Australian Piastri had finished fourth.
Norris said: “It’s frustrating to lose so many points. As a team, we’re always pushing to find as much performance as we can, and we clearly didn’t get that balance right today.
“Nothing I can do will change that now, instead full focus switches to Qatar, where we’ll aim to go out and deliver the best possible performance in every session.”
How it went wrong for McLaren ?
The skid block is mandated in the regulations to prevent the cars from running too low.
The lower an F1 car runs, the quicker it will generally be.
The same fate befell Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton after the Chinese Grand Prix in March.
Hamilton was also disqualified from the 2023 US Grand Prix for the same reason when he was at Mercedes, along with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
And in Belgium last year, Russell was disqualified for being underweight, but Mercedes said unexpected excessive skid wear was one of the reasons.
McLaren said in a statement that the cars had been unexpectedly suffering from an aerodynamic phenomenon known as porpoising. This is where a disruption to the underbody airflow sets up a high-frequency bouncing, “which led to excessive contact with the ground”.
The team added: “We are investigating the reasons for this behaviour of the car, including the effect of accidental damage sustained by both cars, which we found after the race, and that led to an increase of movement of the floor.
“As [governing body] the FIA noted, the breach was unintentional, there was no deliberate attempt to circumvent the regulations, and mitigating circumstances also existed.” (BBC)
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