Lando Norris had his session jeopardised when he picked up a swathe of advertising material in the latter moments of Qualifying 1.
It made for a race against time for McLaren mechanics, who had to clear the debris from his car with just three minutes remaining.
Though Norris got back on track and progressed to Qualifying 3, qualifying fourth, team boss Andrea Stella was critical of the issue.
“What happened in Q1, is something that should not happen,” he asserted.
“It is not up to the standards of racing circuits.
“The fact that the car picks up what was a few metres of advertising banners – we caught it under the car and the car lost as much downforce as equivalent to three seconds per lap.
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“Despite that we were so much under pressure with time, we had lost so much performance that we would need to pit otherwise we would have been out [of qualifying] anyway.
“I appreciate the operational quality that we could deploy, but it shouldn’t happen that the car is compromised by these kinds of problems that have been there right from Free Practice 1.
“It’s not now suddenly in Qualifying we have the banners coming off; it’s been there every single session, and we need to fix it.
“Today, it affected Lando in a pretty catastrophic way, from a performance point of view,” he added.
“I understand potentially Leclerc as well as some other drivers… so what is exactly going to determine the race result tomorrow?
“The luck as to whether you take the banners or not? Or do we want this to come as an outcome of the quality of the drivers, the car, and the teams?
“Something needs to be done.”
It’s believed Norris picked up the banner at Portier where debris was spotted in the track during qualifying – carrying it with him for half the lap before he pitted to have it removed.
Banners have also come away at the Swimming Pool chicane, while damage was reported on the straight out of the Nouvelle Chicane, despite cars not brushing the barrier there.
Leclerc, who claimed pole, revealed he had indeed picked up one of the banners.
“In Q1 it was very tricky, I took that sticker, that sponsor sticker on the lap,” he said.
“That was pretty important at that time, which slowed us down quite a bit.
“Then we pitted, we took off the sponsor banner from the front wing, we went again.”
It’s thought a change in material for this year has created the issue, which occurs when cars tag the barrier.
That has seen the banners ripped more easily than in previous years, though even the force generated by cars running near the barrier is damaging the film.
In response, the FIA had marshals address affected areas in between Qualifying 1 and Qualifying 2, and again ahead of Qualifying 3, removing the offending material.
The governing body is now assessing whether the banners in areas of concern will be replaced at all ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix.
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