Lando Norris has instructed McLaren to investigate his car after a nightmare showing at Monaco Grand Prix free practice. His second-practice was ended by a costly stoppage ahead of this weekend’s race at the Circuit de Monaco.

Things have also been made worse by the fact McLaren have been told they broke the 10pm curfew on Friday evening when they looked to fix the issue in Norris’ car. Norris will have to start today’s GP on the fourth row, significantly affecting any hopes of winning in Monaco, as he did last year. In his post-qualifying interview, Norris urged his team to urgently investigate exactly what went wrong.

After qualifying, which saw Norris finish 8th, he said: “Tricky day. We’re clearly off the pace and need to find time all across the lap. Frustrating to lose track time today, as that’s always important here in Monaco.

“The car simply turned off, so we need to investigate what happened there. We’ll work hard overnight to try and get more performance out of the car.

“But realistically it’s going to be difficult to compete at the front of the field this weekend based on where we are compared to the competition.

“It’s not necessarily a surprise, but it’s not where we want to be, so we’ll work hard to understand what we’re missing and try to recover where we can for tomorrow.”

There is also a stewards’ investigation ongoing as to why stewards found it so difficult to move Norris’ car to safety after the battery failure. After the car could not be budged, a dolly was required to move the car.

McLaren have also released a statement saying they broke the curfew while trying to ascertain what went wrong with the car. They wrote: “Following Lando’s car stopping on track in FP2 yesterday, the team carried out extensive work ahead of FP3 this morning.

“To investigate and address the issue comprehensively, the team elected to break curfew last night and replace the wiring harness, and also changed the ESME pack within the permitted allocation.”