Why Norris and McLaren face critical F1 start test at Dutch GP

Lando Norris faces a critical test to win Formula 1’s 2024 Dutch Grand Prix – seeing off Max Verstappen at the race start amid heavy scrutiny of his getaways this season.

Norris lost possible wins in Spain and Hungary after not converting pole positions at those events into the lead out of the first corner and currently has a 0-3 record of winning from heading the grid.

As he prepares to start from a fourth career F1 pole position at Zandvoort on Sunday, Norris shot down any focus on this statistic during Saturday’s post-qualifying press conference.

“Honestly, stats, to me, don’t mean a lot,” he said.

“I’ve started on or towards the front a lot of times. I know my stats are not the best for that and more often than not, I’ve kind of gone backwards rather than holding positions.

“People can write what they want. They can have their own opinions. A lot of these things are true and are facts to people. But yeah, it’s more just using them to my advantage and improve on my weaknesses. Simple as that.”

But the pressure on this area of Norris’s skillset is considerable in Sunday’s race, with overtaking set to be at a premium amongst the frontrunning cars in a dry race given the lack of passing between them at the wider, faster, lower-downforce layout used last time out at Spa.

The Dutch race also follows Norris going wide at the first corner in the Belgian GP and shipping positions, which had McLaren vowing to investigate what had happened heading into the summer break.

Team chief designer Rob Marshall said as the Zandvoort weekend got underway that McLaren is “not worried about our start performance” as “you look at the numbers, I think we’ve been getting off the line pretty reasonably”.

Indeed, Norris’s reaction times in Spain and Hungary were not the issue – it was the second phase of the starts where he lost out to Verstappen and team-mate Oscar Piastri respectively.

Marshall said “there’s others that are a bit better, but it’s not something we’re concerned about”, while Norris’s own assessment was “I know my starts have not been my forte over the last [races] probably… [but] they’ve not been bad.

“Honestly, I’m still up there with being one of the best average starters,” he added. “I’ve just missed out on a couple of races and maybe slightly worse than what it’s been over the course of a…