Lando Norris says his Dutch Grand Prix victory is the first time McLaren has had a dominant car, after overtaking Max Verstappen to take his second career win.
Verstappen took the lead from Norris on the run to Turn 1, a situation that marked the sixth occasion that Norris has failed to lead at the end of the first lap when he has started from pole position. However, he was able to overtake the Red Bull driver before the first round of pit stops and went on to win by over 22s — marking the biggest margin of victory this season.
“It feels amazing once again,” Norris said. “I wouldn’t say a perfect race, because of lap one again, but afterward it was beautiful. 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. Honestly, quite a straightforward race; still tough, but very enjoyable.
“Obviously, didn’t start in the most optimistic way, but the pace was unbelievable from the beginning and I could go with Max quite happily at the start. I just didn’t expect our pace to be probably as good as what it was today, which is a good thing. It’s nice to be kind of a little bit surprised by this.
“As soon as I got ahead, it was quite straightforward. I could push. I had good confidence to push the whole race, save the tires a little bit, but just get in a good rhythm and go from there. The car felt amazing … and made my life easier for sure, so a big thanks to the team.”
Norris acknowledges that McLaren had the best all-around package across multiple circuits for some time, but views the Zandvoort performance as the first time the team has had a clear advantage.
“This whole weekend, I think we’ve had the best car,” he said. “We’ve not had a dominant car at any point this season, I would say. Even if you go back to Hungary, as much as people hate me to say it, Max was still very quick in Hungary. He just didn’t have a great race, but his pace was still very, very strong.
“Obviously we know more information than people do on the outside, so we can comment in much more factual ways than people can who are just watching on TV and taking their picks and guesses.
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“We’ve had, on average, the best car. We probably should have won two, three more races as a team, but we didn’t. We’re not saying anything more than that. 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 and take a step back and reset and go again.
“So yes, we’ve had a great car. This was our first time we brought some good upgrades to the car since Miami. They worked very well then. They’ve worked once again now. It’s still a long way to go, so we still have to keep working hard because this is just Zandvoort. Monza is a completely different circuit. We’ll keep our heads down and keep chipping away.”
Qualifying on pole position on Saturday led to Norris receiving multiple questions about his race starts, and he admits he wasn’t certain he’d have the performance to overtake Verstappen on track having lost the lead, but says he didn’t get flustered as it was a situation he’s been in before.
“After yesterday, we were confident the pace was going to be good, for sure,” he said. “My long-run pace on Friday was very good, but you don’t do anything more than, like, 10, 11 laps, and you never know in the 72-lap race what’s going to happen. I would [also say] Max’s pace didn’t look bad on Friday.
“You could already pick apart a bit of it and kind of give yourself some confidence. It wasn’t like we came into here thinking, ‘Yeah, we can easily just pass him on track,’ and pull the gap that we did today. It’s just not often that I’ve been in the lead and being able to control things and do what I want to do and look after the tires and have clean air and stuff like that. All of this makes a big difference in the end of the day, so I didn’t expect things to go as well as it did.
“After getting done into Turn 1 and off the line, I was actually just surprisingly calm, maybe because I’m a bit used to going backwards at the start. I’m very prepared for those kind of scenarios, and I was very calm and just, ‘OK, well, what can I do now?’ That was just to look ahead, start saving tires, see what I had pace-wise.
“Really, even like lap 10, 11, 12, 13, I managed to catch Max a little bit again and started to gain quite a bit of optimism that, actually, I could almost pass him on track, so I had two opportunities. The first one, I wasn’t quite close enough. The next lap I did it and I could get my head down from there.”