Lando Norris said after winning the Dutch Grand Prix that it was “pretty stupid” to think about winning the world championship – but his dominant victory on championship leader Max Verstappen’s home track certainly has Red Bull worried.
Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko said after the race that Norris’ victory was “alarming”, external – and made it clear that he was speaking not only about the constructors’ championship, in which it was already very clear that Red Bull were in trouble, but also the drivers’, in which Verstappen still has a huge 70-point lead.
And Verstappen himself, who has now not won since the Spanish Grand Prix in June five races ago, did not disagree.
“This weekend was just a bad weekend in general,” Verstappen 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.”
Norris’ victory was the second-most dominant of the year, in terms of the winner’s gap to his closest rival. Only Verstappen’s victory in the opening race of the season in Bahrain, when he was 25 seconds clear of the first non-Red Bull, saw the victor cross the line further ahead than the 22.9 seconds by which Norris headed the Dutchman.
It was the manner of it that was so impressive. Norris and McLaren somehow fluffed the start, not for the first time this year, gifting Verstappen the lead.
But while before – in Spain, in Hungary and in Belgium – this has ruined Norris’ chances of victory, it soon became clear that would not be the case in Zandvoort.
Norris clung to Verstappen like a limpet and then overtook him with imperious ease before the first pit stops, cruising off into the middle distance thereafter. To rub salt into his rivals’ wounds, he then set the fastest lap on the final lap of the race, securing an extra point.
That made the amount he clawed back on Verstappen eight points, not seven.
Significantly, both in figurative and literal terms, that was slightly over the 7.8 points per race Norris needed on average to claw back on Verstappen over the remaining 10 races to win the title before arriving in the Netherlands.
Norris, though, was not about to get carried away.
“I mean, I’ve been fighting for the championship since the first race of the year,” he said. “There’s no sudden decision of, now I need to do better.
“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. So it’s not a question that I need to get asked every single weekend.”
