McLaren chief’s promise will be music to Lando Norris’ ears in bid to steal F1 title

Lando Norris produced a dominant win for McLaren at the Dutch Grand Prix, cutting Max Verstappen’s lead at the top of the Formula 1 drivers’ standings to 70 points

McLaren’s team principal Andrea Stella is confident his team will “be more competitive” for the remainder of the season after Lando Norris’ dominant victory at the Dutch Grand Prix.

Norris beat defending champion Max Verstappen, who has won the last three races in Zandvoort, by more than 20 seconds and closed the gap at the top of the drivers’ standings to 70 points.

Verstappen has not won any of the last five races and Stella believes the recent upgrades McLaren have made to their car means they will be able to rival Red Bull at every remaining track – even ones where the RB20 have an advantage.

“I have to say today is very encouraging from a performance point of view,” Stella said after Norris’ win in Zandvoort. “At the same time it happens at a track that seems to be just very suitable for our car, like Hungary was.

“Even after Hungary, we said, ‘Ah it’s going to be P1, P2 every race.’ But it’s not. It just seems to be very track dependent at the moment. But today was definitely beyond expectation, including yesterday, in terms of qualifying performance, in terms of race performance, and to some extent, even the tyre degradation was very good, to the point that Lando scored the fastest lap of the race at the last lap.

“I’m not so sure in terms of relative competitiveness. I think if we go to tracks which belong to this kind of family of tracks, then I think we can be confident that we will perform strongly – like high downforce, long corners.

“If we go to tracks where you have very high-speed corners, like in Silverstone, then we know Red Bull, they are very strong in this kind of layout. And still, I think if you go back to Austria, they will be faster, because in Austria, they pulled off like a four-tenths advantage in qualifying.

“But I think thanks to the upgrades now, we will be more competitive even where Red Bull were faster than us, potentially. It’s not easy to see. I think it’s in a way, we miss the opportunity to see in Belgium, who would have been the fastest car in dry condition because of the qualifying intermediate tyres.

“But we think that the car in the current configuration is possibly not enough in terms of the performance required to be the best car at every single event. That’s why we plan to deliver more upgrades before the end of the season.”

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