Mercedes may have just cost Lando Norris a race win but nobody is talking about it

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Lando Norris’ Formula 1 title defence may already be over, with the McLaren driver now over 100 points behind Kimi Antonelli.

Norris still hasn’t won a Grand Prix this year, taking his sole victory in the Miami Sprint. He could become the first reigning champion not to stand on the top step at all since Nico Rosberg, who retired immediately after his 2016 triumph.

For the last active champion who failed to win a race, one has to go back to 2014 and Sebastian Vettel. Just like this year, regulation changes reshaped the pecking order.

What, in your opinion, has gone wrong for McLaren this year? 📉

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Lando Norris could have won Belgian Grand Prix without Mercedes’ battery problems

McLaren have fundamentally lacked pace this season relative to Mercedes, but reliability has also been a major contributor to the points deficit. Neither car even took the start in China, while Norris also suffered retirements in Canada and Monaco.

Ironically, McLaren’s problems partly stem from Mercedes’ power unit. The double DNS in Shanghai was down to battery failures, and Norris suffered another at the very next race in Japan.

McLaren tried to fix the Suzuka component, but it malfunctioned again during practice at Monaco. That meant a penalty for exceeding the maximum allocation of three per season was inevitable.

The Woking outfit chose to take it at Spa, rather than the Hungaroring or Zandvoort, two tracks where overtaking is more difficult.

Agonisingly, Norris’ pace in Belgium exceeded expectations. He qualified in the top three for the first time all year, but that became 13th place.

Unlucky with the timing of a virtual safety car, he only progressed to seventh, but Norris thinks he had the pace to win in normal circumstances.

While he trailed Antonelli by over four-tenths in qualifying, the McLaren looked much stronger in race trim. He gained 6.5 seconds on the Italian in his second stint and set the fastest lap of the race on the final tour, by which point the advantage of his fresher tyres had faded.

Given the single-lap pace deficit and the unfortunate Sunday outcome for Norris, nobody seems to have recognised that a win may have been on the cards. But ultimately, a faulty Mercedes component cost the British driver the chance to compete.

McLaren belatedly received Mercedes’ reliability upgrades last weekend, though they were still affected by a power outage on the opening lap that hindered all eight cars in the pool.