26/05/2024
NEWS STORY
Lando Norris is leading the call for organisers to find an alternative to the advertising 'stickers' that have been causing problems this weekend.
The McLaren driver was one of several drivers to encounter pieces of the banners, which are stuck to the Armco barriers around the track, but are coming loose and falling on to the track as the cars get ever closer and subsequently being picked up as the cars run over them.
In Q1, Charles Leclerc had to pit when a large piece of sticker stuck to his front wing, while Norris had to have a sticker removed from the underneath of his car later in the session.
Sergio Perez, who ended the day 18th, says he lost time when he tried to avoid stickers which had fallen on to the racing line.
"I had to pit to get it off," said Norris. "It just shouldn't happen in Formula One.
"It's a bit silly in my opinion," he added, "we said it would happen yesterday and they said they were going to fix it but obviously it wasn't fixed.
"It's a shame that you have to get lucky," he continued, referring to the fact that he was able to pit to have the sticker removed and return to the track in time to improve, "I was lucky that I had enough time otherwise it wouldn't have ruined my qualifying and my whole weekend."
Asked if he feared similar issues during the race, he said: "Yeah, but there is nothing I can do. It can only ruin your race at the minute. They need to come up with a better solution than just stickers because of course we are touching the wall and all this stuff, but it's not acceptable that this can ruin your whole weekend, just for some stickers and things like that.
"They need to find a better solution," he insisted.
"What happened in Q1 is something that should not happen and is not up to the standards of racing circuits," added team boss, Andrea Stella. "We caught it under the car and the car lost as much downforce as equivalent to three seconds per lap.
"It shouldn't happen that the car is compromised by these kinds of problems that have been there right from free practice one. It is not that suddenly in qualifying we have the banners coming off. It's been there every single session, and we need to fix it.
"I think today, it affected Lando in a pretty catastrophic way from a performance point of view. And I understand potentially Leclerc as well. And some other drivers too."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Monaco here.