McLaren will fit a fourth power electronics unit to Lando Norris’s car at the Belgian Grand Prix, and the team has said plainly what that costs: a 10-place grid penalty at Spa.
Each driver gets three of the units for the 2026 season. The fourth puts Norris over the limit, and the penalty follows automatically. McLaren confirmed it in a statement to PlanetF1.com on Thursday.
Two failures and a fix
The team traced the problem to a run of bad luck with the part. “Car Number 1’s first power electronics unit suffered a terminal issue in China, which meant Lando was unable to start the race,” McLaren said.
The replacement fitted in Japan was withdrawn for remedial work after trouble in Free Practice. That forced a move to the third and final unit in the allocation. The second unit was repaired after Japan, but it suffered a terminal issue in second practice at Monaco and came out of the allocation again.
The unit installed in Japan has run reliably in every session since Miami. The new unit, though, comes with changes. McLaren said Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains has since introduced a series of reliability fixes to its power electronics, and taking advantage of them means accepting the penalty. McLaren will also run Mercedes’ latest power unit at Spa, after using a previous-spec engine at the British Grand Prix.
Why Spa
McLaren picked Belgium on purpose. Overtaking is relatively easier at Spa than at the next two races, in Hungary and Zandvoort, so Norris has a better chance to recover places. The team plans to use the fourth unit for the rest of the season, “in order to maximise reliability while minimising sporting penalties on Lando.”
It has been a hard defence of the title for the reigning champion. Norris is fifth in the standings with two podium finishes. After his home race at Silverstone, the 26-year-old called the MCL40 “one of the hardest cars I’ve ever driven in Formula 1.”
Sources
- 2026 Formula One World Championship – Wikipedia
- Lando Norris grid penalty confirmed for Belgian Grand Prix
Sources
- Google News – Lando Norris to receive 10-place grid penalty at Spa…
- 2026 FORMULA 1 POWER UNIT SPORTING REGULATIONS
