Lando Norris is having a nightmare trying to figure out what's wrong with his McLaren. The defending champion has been struggling badly over the last couple of races, and it's getting worse. His teammate Oscar Piastri has been leaving him in the dust, whether it's in Baku or Malaysia. Norris finished ninth at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia while Piastri grabbed sixth, and things nearly got spicy when Norris almost took out his teammate at the safety car restart at turn one.

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Here's where it gets dodgy though. Martin Brundle reckons there's definitely something loose in Norris' MCL40, and McLaren literally can't figure out what it is. Brundle explained on Sky Sports that the team doesn't know whether the problem lives in the power unit or the chassis, which means they're basically playing guesswork and swapping bits out left and right. But here's the concerning part, Brundle discovered they've already put a second engine in the car.

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That's the real head-scratcher. You'd think if the power unit was dodgy, you'd just bin it off, take the grid penalty at somewhere like Singapore, and move on fresh. Not ideal, but clean. But because they're on their second engine and the problems persist, there's clearly something else lurking in there that nobody can pin down. Brundle called it a 'gremlin in the system', and honestly, that's spot on because McLaren genuinely doesn't know where to look next.

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The timing couldn't be worse for Norris either. He had brilliant momentum after back-to-back wins in Hungary and the Netherlands, but that's all evaporated now. His ninth place in Malaysia has him sitting fifth in the championship, level on points with Max Verstappen, who grabbed the win. If McLaren can't sort this mystery out soon, Norris' title hopes could really start slipping away.

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