If you’ve heard Lando Norris and his race engineer’s radio comms over the past few weekends, you would’ve noticed a different voice coming through to Norris. And no, it’s not his mate Carlos Sainz. Instead of Will Joseph, who’s been his engineer since he joined Formula 1 and McLaren in 2019, it’s Jose Manuel Lopez. But why this sudden change in race engineers, you ask? And won’t this affect Norris, considering how crucial a driver’s relationship with their race engineer is? McLaren team principal Andrea Stella explained the change and Norris’ state of mind.

McLaren is a team that’s always advocated the importance of mental health. Its partnership with Mind—as part of its overall health and wellbeing program—is a testament to how serious the Papaya team is about its team personnel’s wellbeing. After F1 released its mammoth 24-race calendar for 2024, the increasing number of races has weighed down on every team. And McLaren is already taking steps to look out for its own. And Will Joseph’s absence is a result of that.

In a recent interview, Andrea Stella revealed McLaren has started rotating its engineers to reduce their workload. As quoted by motorsport-total.com, he said, “It becomes a challenge even on a personal level to cope with all the races. We want to create such a long chain of people who can support the driver.” [Translated by Google]

When asked how Norris feels about the change, he replied, “Lando is happy with that, and it’s in his own interest to promote his own engineers because those are the guys who have to do it quickly in order to be successful in the future.” 

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Norris has worked with Lopez when Joseph wasn’t available, so it’s not all that different for him. Even so, it’s fairly new territory for Lopez, who’s a performance engineer otherwise. Stella added, “A driver isn’t just the receiver in this process. He’s actually the one who leads. And Lando does that very well.” And considering how technically challenging being a race engineer is, Stella explained, “That’s why there’s so much rotation because we need to give all the engineers as much experience as possible.” While McLaren has started rotating engineers, Norris suggested another rotation to the FIA.

Lando Norris isn’t happy with 24 races in a year

Since F1 released its 2024 calendar, drivers have expressed their displeasure about the increasing number of races. Max Verstappen was among the first to say it would be too many races to deal with. And Lando Norris agreed with him. Norris said, “I’d say 24 is a lot. If I had to put like a perfect number, I would say it’s probably closer to 20.” He added, “20 is a good number, also for the lives of mechanics, engineers, everyone that travels. They’re away from their families, kids, for so many days, more days than us as drivers are away, so it’s tougher for them.”

Hosting races is a matter of pride for countries and venues. So they do everything they can to ensure they’ll be on the calendar every year. But that’s not feasible, per Norris. As a solution, he suggested venues hosting races on a rotational basis so that even with 20 races, every venue would get the opportunity to host a race. He said, “Sometimes you want to go to certain places in different years. You just can’t go to all the tracks that people want to go to. It’s as simple as that.”

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What do you think about McLaren’s steps toward making work easier for its engineers and team personnel?