McLaren suspects F1 chassis crack caused Ricciardo’s early retirement

Ricciardo was in the mix with the Alpines for a handful of points at Interlagos when he suffered a sudden loss of power.

Initially, there were suggestions it was to do with the power unit itself but Seidl confirmed after the race that following an initial investigation, there was a crack on the chassis where the power unit is installed.

“We had a power loss on track,” Seidl said. “In the initial investigation we found a technical issue, a crack on the chassis side of the power unit installation, which we need to now investigate. I can give you a better update next week in Qatar.”

Despite the early retirement, Ricciardo was more pleased with his race performance after struggling for pace in the Saturday sprint.

“We started to lose power and it was getting worse and worse,” Ricciardo explained. “We tried to fix it with some switches, but it was for now not recoverable on track. So we needed to retire and check out what it is.

“Shame because we are in the fight with Gasly, and we knew that Ferrari had a pit again, so maybe a one-stop would’ve been interesting. A bit unlucky, it has been a long run without DNFs, so we can’t always be perfect.

“I’m much happier with today’s race than yesterday, we made some good things happen. I’m disappointed not to get the points, but much happier with the race.”

It was a disappointing day for McLaren in the race for third in the constructors’ championship with Lando Norris only finishing tenth following contact with Carlos Sainz on the opening lap gave him a puncture.

Seidl described the incident on the opening lap as an “unlucky racing incident”.

“He [Lando] obviously had a great launch and I think Carlos had quite a bad start so he got ahead and obviously, the outside is very tight out there and I think he suddenly ran out of space, unfortunately, touched the front wing of Carlos, causing the puncture,” he added.

“An unlucky racing incident.”