Lando Norris’ domination of the Dutch Grand Prix has inevitably prompted excitement around his chances of fighting for the championship.
But realistically this result, at a track which was always likely to favour McLaren, says very little about his chances of catching runaway points leader Max Verstappen.
No doubt Norris grabbed every point available to him on Sunday. Including, with some style, the bonus point for fastest lap, which he snatched from Lewis Hamilton on the final tour.
The Mercedes driver looked set to claim the point with a lap of 1’13.878 on a 14-lap-old set of soft tyres. The team were confident enough that no one would beat that mark they told Hamilton he didn’t need to make another attempt to improve it. But as he raced to the chequered flag, on a set of hard tyres which had covered 44 laps, Norris chipped six-hundredths off Hamilton’s best to claim the extra point.
That feat ensured Norris trousered maximum points at Zandvoort. But with Verstappen finishing a damage-limiting second, the McLaren driver gained just eight points on him, trimming the gap between the two from 78 points to 70.
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Norris is not yet the master of his own destiny in the championship fight. Even if he wins the remaining 12 races – nine grands prix plus a trio of sprint events – Verstappen can assure himself of the championship by finishing second to him every time. Norris would need to amass five more fastest lap bonus points to tip the balance in his favour, and you can be sure Red Bull would deploy Sergio Perez as a spoiler in this situation to ensure the title goes their driver’s way.
Given the standard of competition we’ve seen in F1 so far this year, this scenario is unlikely to unfold anyway, but it illustrates the scale of the challenge Norris now faces. And despite inflicting one of the heaviest defeats Red Bull have suffered in a straight fight under the current rules, yesterday’s result says very little about Norris’ prospects of making the kind of gain he needs on Verstappen.
Although the scale of Norris’ win, with a 22-second margin to Verstappen, was seized on by some as evidence of a new peak for McLaren, there was arguably nothing here we haven’t seen before. Oscar Piastri won the Hungarian Grand Prix two rounds ago with 14 seconds over the nearest non-McLaren and 21 seconds over Verstappen. Norris, of…
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