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.
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at www.espn.com – RPM…