McLaren’s Lando Norris lost valuable ground after a slow tyre change at the 2025 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, costing him a potential top-five finish.
Norris, running fourth on lap 38, was summoned into the pits for fresh tyres in a bid to strengthen his position in the closing stages. Unfortunately, what should have been a routine stop turned problematic, with the front-right wheel nut causing delays. The pit crew struggled to secure the nut quickly, stretching the stop to over four seconds, significantly longer than the average two-second pit stop.
This delay saw Norris rejoin the race down in eighth place, behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson. While he managed to overtake Leclerc on lap 41, Norris then became trapped behind Lawson and Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda due to a DRS train, making further overtaking extremely difficult.
Sky F1 analyst Karun Chandhok described the pit stop mishap as “massively frustrating,” emphasizing that a clean stop would have allowed Norris to clear the midfield pack and challenge higher up the order. Former Aston Martin head of strategy Bernie Collins echoed this sentiment, stating that even without additional overtakes, Norris could have secured fifth place, which was out of reach due to the slow stop.
Despite these setbacks, Norris fought hard to finish seventh, the same position he had started from. McLaren team principal Andrea Stella, however, downplayed the impact of the slow stop, attributing Norris’s final position more to the car’s relative pace on the Baku street circuit than to pit lane issues.
Nevertheless, this marked the second consecutive race where a slow pit stop has affected Norris, raising concerns about McLaren’s pit crew consistency at critical moments.
Norris remains locked in a fierce championship battle alongside teammate Oscar Piastri, whose early crash in Azerbaijan handed Norris a valuable opportunity he ultimately couldn’t fully exploit. As the season progresses, McLaren will be determined to refine their pit operations to avoid such costly errors in future races.
