Max Verstappen left ‘alarmed’ as Lando Norris says McLaren now have best car

Lando Norris believes his McLaren car is now leading the Formula One field after the British driver scored a dominant victory at the Dutch Grand Prix. His opinion was supported by the world champion, Max ­Verstappen, who was well beaten into second and observed that his Red Bull’s lack of performance was an “alarming” development.
Norris won in Zandvoort despite having been beaten off the line by Verstappen. The 24-year-old bided his time before exploiting the fearsome pace of the McLaren to sweep past the world champion and then extend his lead with ease until taking the flag by almost 23 seconds from the Dutchman.
Since a swathe of upgrades were applied at the Miami GP the McLaren has been repeatedly ­fighting at the very front with Verstappen and Red Bull, Norris and his ­teammate Oscar Piastri taking one win apiece until now. In the Netherlands, though, it was in a class of its own and Norris confirmed he believed their car was now the quickest on the grid and that they should have delivered more wins with it.
When asked if he thought it was now the fastest package, the British driver said “100%, yeah”, adding: “Today, this whole weekend, I think we’ve had the best car. We know more information than people do on the outside, so we can comment in much more factual ways than people who are just watching on TV and taking their picks and guesses.
“We’ve had, on average, the best car. We probably should have won two, three more races as a team, but we didn’t and it’s because we’ve not done a good enough job. I didn’t do a good enough job.”
Norris is now 70 points behind Verstappen in the world championship and the team brought further upgrades to this round at Zandvoort which appear to have been as effective as the first tranche in Florida. His feelings on the advantage of the McLaren were acknowledged by Verstappen, who echoed the words of the Red Bull motorsport director, Helmut Marko, in describing their car’s drop in balance and performance as alarming.
“We don’t have the fastest car. We have some issues that we have to solve and we are working on that,” he said. “This weekend was just a bad weekend in general. So we need to understand that. But the last few races, they haven’t really been fantastic. So that in a sense, was already a bit alarming.”
Losing the lead from the start was the third time Norris has dropped places from pole this season, which he attributed to a wheelspin issue the team needed to address but also noted that his reaction was crucial in going on to pass Verstappen for victory.
“After getting done in to turn one and off the line I was actually just surprisingly calm, maybe because I’m a bit used to going backwards at the start,” he said. “I’m very prepared for those kind of scenarios. And I was very calm and thought: ‘OK, well, what can I do now?’ And that was just to look ahead, start saving tyres, see what I had pace wise.”
The pace he had was indeed formidable and he exploited it with aplomb to retake the lead on lap 18 and go on to secure his second F1 win.