“We have an agreement with Mercedes”– McLaren will pick a reserve driver from Mercedes if Lando Norris gets a ban.
Lando Norris might get a one-race ban from the FIA. as he has already picked 10 penalty points from the earlier incidents in the previous races. Under F1’s rules, any driver who reached 12 penalty points in a 12-month rolling period, will automatically be banned for one race.
But Andreas Seidl has a plan to escape that predicament of one-race without Norris, as his team has apparently made an agreement with Mercedes to borrow a reserve driver, if in need.
“We have an agreement with Mercedes regarding the reserve drivers,” Seidl told RTL. Currently, Mercedes has Stoffel Vandoorne and Nico Hulkenberg hired as the reserve drivers.
The pair is also a go-to reserve option for Aston Martin, but most probably it would be Hulkenberg who would appear for McLaren in need, as Vandoorne is often engaged with his Formula E commitments, which often clash with F1.
Last year also Hulkenberg appeared for three races with Racing Point (now Aston Martin) when Sergio Perez and Lance Stroll got COVID-19 on separate occasions.
It cannot be in the spirit of F1
Despite the solution, Seidl is naturally is not happy with the potential absence of Norris anytime in this season, as he doesn’t think, the penalty points the Briton got in Speilberg is fair.
“It is not reassuring,” Seidl added. “There is a fundamental risk. It cannot be in the spirit of F1 that a driver has to sit out a race for the kind of incident we saw in Spielberg.”
Norris is presently running 4th in the championship race and is also spearheading McLaren’s campaign this season, his absence from a major event would not possibly how well with McLaren’s prospects this year.
