Norris' win puts the pressure of a title fight on Verstappen, Red Bull

ZANDVOORT, Netherlands — Lando Norris‘ comfortable Dutch Grand Prix win was a clear sign that Max Verstappen does not have the 2024 Formula One world championship in the bag, regardless of what the standings might look like.

Norris’ second F1 win reduced Verstappen’s title lead from 78 points to 70 with nine races to spare. In any other situation, that would be an easy championship to write off, given Verstappen’s incredible talent and ability to maximise results from a tricky Red Bull car. But the nature of Norris’ 22-second win — a country mile in F1 terms — underlined how much F1’s competitive order has changed since the early races of this season.

McLaren is now clearly the team to beat and has a car to take points away from Verstappen at every remaining event. Norris was coy on Sunday evening when asked about his title chances.

“I’ve been fighting for the championship since the first race of the year,” he said. “I’ve been working hard the whole year and I’m still 70 points behind Max, so it’s pretty stupid to think of anything at the minute. I just take one race at a time and just keep doing what I’m doing now because there’s no point to think ahead and think of the rest. I don’t care about it at the minute.”

Make no mistake about it: Norris’ win on Sunday has put Red Bull on high alert.

“We’re lucky that they underperformed at the start of the year, so we’ve got a 70-point buffer, but that can diminish pretty quickly,” Red Bull CEO and team principal Christian Horner said Sunday after the race. “It’s remarkable that that’s only Lando’s second win in that car. He’s driving well, he’s finding confidence.

“The pressure is on us to respond. We’re used to being in championship fights over the years, we’ll dig deep and we’re going to fight with everything we’ve got over the remaining races.”

Horner is right that Norris should have tasted victory more often. He waited a long time for win number one in May — five years and 110 races, to be exact — but the wait for the follow-up seemed longer than four months, given the squandered opportunities there have been since that debut win in Miami. Norris might have won had he started on pole at Imola, he could have won in different circumstances in Canada and Hungary and missteps cost him potential wins in Spain, Austria and Great Britain.

After F1’s customary four-week summer break, Norris made sure any narrative of wasted chances did not linger into September.

“You know, we probably should have won two, three more races as a team, but we didn’t,” Norris admitted Sunday night. “And we’re not saying anything more than that. You know, we should have won and we didn’t, and it’s because we’ve not done a good enough job. I didn’t do a good enough job. And we worked hard over the summer break to just try to take a step back and reset and go again.”

It wasn’t completely straightforward.

For a handful of laps, it felt like the storyline to the Dutch Grand Prix might have followed a painfully familiar tone as Verstappen passed Norris on the short run down to Turn 1 and into the lead. It was the sixth time Norris had started an F1 grand prix or sprint race from pole and the sixth time he had lost the lead by the end of the first lap. The telemetry showed Norris and Verstappen had a near-identical reaction time when the start lights went out, but through the second phase of the start, the Red Bull pulled alongside and then clear of the McLaren.

This time it was different, though, as the huge pace advantage of the McLaren quickly became apparent. Norris flashed past Verstappen on Lap 18 and then disappeared into the distance. Norris’ slow start was the only negative from an otherwise-flawless afternoon.

“It feels amazing, yeah, once again,” Norris said immediately after climbing out of the car. “I wouldn’t say a perfect race, because of Lap 1 again, but afterwards it was beautiful. You know, the pace was very strong. The car was unbelievable today, so I could get comfortable, I could push and get past Max, which was the main thing, and just go from there. So, honestly, quite a straightforward race, still tough, but very enjoyable.”

Norris had dismissed questions about his slow starts Saturday after qualifying. His slow getaways will continue to bug him and McLaren until a remedy is found — “[to] not get wheelspin” was his simple answer to what the solution might be — but driver and team can comfort themselves with a reassuring thought leaving the Netherlands. If you can beat the next-quickest car by more than 22 seconds, who needs a clean start?

McLaren now the clear leader

While he played down talk of the championship, Norris was emphatic about the car he now has at his disposal. Asked if McLaren was now the quickest car on the grid he replied: “Oh, 100%, yeah.”

McLaren’s advantage is now clear as day. The upgrade it introduced at the Miami Grand Prix made its car an all-rounder able to compete at every type of circuit. Upgrades the team brought to the Netherlands appear to have moved the goalposts again.

“This was our first time we really put something on the car to drive us a step forward, and it definitely did that, but it’s not like we’ve not been competitive over the last two months since Miami,” Norris said. “We’ve been quickest in Budapest, very quick at certain other races like Barcelona and Silverstone and stuff like that, but small things make a big difference. And today, with how the car felt, I’m sure it was a step ahead. You know, a new rear wing probably helped me get past Max today, so little things like that definitely help you go forwards.”

Horner saw enough of McLaren’s pace to know what Red Bull is striving to beat for the rest of the year.

“McLaren are setting the benchmark now,” he said. “That’s clear in terms of pace. They’ve been that the last couple of races. Certainly in Hungary they were very competitive, Spa it was Mercedes, here, Lando in particular was very, very strong. Definitely they have the fastest car at the moment.

“We have to respond to that. It’s not rocket science, there’s no silver bullets in this business, it’s a matter of understanding the problem, addressing the problem and then implementing fixes to it.”

Verstappen gave a calmer assessment of how things stand, but he must now be sure he is going to have to fight tooth and nail to win a title that a few months ago seemed like a matter of when, not if.

“I think this weekend was just a bad weekend in general,” he said. “So we need to understand that, but the last few races already, they haven’t really been fantastic. So that, I think in a sense, was already a bit alarming, but we know that we don’t need to panic. We are just trying to improve the situation, and that’s what we are working on, but F1 is very complicated.”

The 2024 championship might still be Verstappen’s to lose, but a few more Norris wins and that might be an outcome the Dutchman starts having to come to terms with.