The McLaren driver had headed into Saturday’s sprint as Red Bull’s potential main challenger after qualifying third behind Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez. But it all went wrong at Turn 3, as an opportunity to pounce on his Red Bull rivals nearly tripping over themselves evaporated when his car went into anti-stall and delayed him.
Norris did not know at the time of the incident exactly what had happened, but data that emerged in the engineering debrief later highlighted the specifics of what happened.
Asked by Autosport to explain why the anti-stall came in, Norris said: “It's more that I lost the rear as I turned into the corner, just because the tyres are cold and it's a bit difficult to get the inters to work straight away.
“So I lost the rear and kind of slid further up the track and almost into them [the Red Bulls]. To avoid that, I had to hit the brakes again and, at such a slow speed with basically zero grip, I locked the rear tyres quite a bit, putting me into the anti-stall.
Source: Autosport