How realistic do you think Lando Norris’ chances are of clearing the 70-point deficit to win the Championship? I personally think it’s impossible. Damian
Lando Norris said after winning the Dutch Grand Prix that it was “pretty stupid” to think right now about beating Max Verstappen to the Championship and that he was just going to focus on each race as it comes.
It’s a long-shot, of course, with a 70-point deficit and only nine races to go, as well as three ‘sprint’ events. But if Norris keeps driving as he did in Zandvoort, it’s do-able. Just.
To make it happen, Norris needs to keep beating Verstappen himself, and also ideally for others to start doing so as well. And for Verstappen to have a bad race or two – which, with Singapore coming up, where Red Bull struggled last year, is definitely possible.
Norris and McLaren have a few things to iron out – especially starts and first laps. Norris has already potentially lost two race wins at the start this year, in Spain and Hungary, and although he managed to re-pass Verstappen after losing out again in Zandvoort, he can’t count on doing that every time.
Both Norris and McLaren team principal Andrea Stella addressed the issue of McLaren’s starts after the Dutch Grand Prix.
Both drivers lost places off the line, and Norris and Oscar Piastri seemed to start almost in unison, which suggests a car/systems issue in this case rather than a driver one.
Stella and Norris both accept things need to improve. Norris said: “Again, it was a race which almost slipped away off the line, but today was, again, different to every other thing that’s happened.
“So, kind of like I said before the weekend, we need to find a bit more consistency, but we’ve worked on it and I feel like I’ve done better procedurally (this time), but obviously didn’t turn into the correct thing.”
Stella said: “The start is such a fundamental element to go racing. It is as important as car performance. And we do have to look very carefully into the details about why our competitor seems to gain a little bit on us.
“Statistically over the course of the season, we are competitive from a launch point of view but we see that there are some cars – like Verstappen, for instance – who seem to be performing very well at the start. And if you can capitalise a good qualifying performance with a good start, it makes your life so much easier.
“So we definitely we have to look into this. And this comes from the driver in terms of their launch procedure execution, and it comes from a team point of view because there some aspects that are under the team’s control. And we need to look into what kind of optimisation we are able to do.”
