McLaren have more belief in title bid after “unexpected” Dutch GP dominance · RaceFans

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella says Lando Norris’ victory in the Dutch Grand Prix gives his team more belief they can challenge for the constructors’ championship.

Norris scored a maximum 26 points at Zandvoort, winning by more than 20 seconds ahead of Max Verstappen and taking the bonus point for fastest lap on the final lap.

Despite McLaren bringing a significant upgrades package to the first race following the summer break, Stella said the dominant nature of the team’s performance was “positively unexpected.”

“We would have never thought that coming to Zandvoort – which has been a difficult venue for us, a difficult circuit in the past – we could put together such a strong performance in qualifying and then confirm this in the race,” Stella told the official F1 channel.

“I’m just very happy for the team. Very happy for Lando himself. I think he has just proven the level of competitiveness he can pull off – we know that, we’ve always known that. He’s been absolutely faultless this weekend.”

Stella believes that the team’s performance was flattered by the unusual nature of the Zandvoort circuit and does not expect to be as dominant heading into future rounds.

“The performance gap advantage that we had this weekend is bigger than the size of the upgrades, in terms of lap time improvement,” he said. “So I think overall, this is a circuit that just seems to suit our car very well.

| Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

“Obviously having the upgrades might have added some performance, but I wouldn’t say the upgrades were necessarily the whole positive advantage that we enjoyed. However, to once again deliver upgrades that behaved as expected, it’s just an opportunity for me once more to say thank you very much to the entire team at McLaren for the quality and the hard work that they have been pulling off. There will be more projects coming for the next races and it’s making the final part of the season exciting.”

Although Norris won comfortably, team mate Oscar Piastri fell from third on the grid to finish fourth behind Charles Leclerc. Stella described Piastri finishing off the podium as “a little bit of a shame.”

“He had the performance to be definitely part of the podium,” said Stella. “I think he had the performance to put Max under some pressure, but unfortunately we got stuck behind Leclerc and we couldn’t overtake.”

After gaining 12 points on the constructors’ championship leaders, McLaren are now just 30 points behind Red Bull with nine rounds remaining. Stella says his team will fight hard to try and catch Red Bull before the end of the season.

“Let’s say we keep believing in it,” he said. “We believed in it before this event and now even more.

“At the same time we are talking about competing with Red Bull. They are a dominant team. They know what they are doing very well. It will not be an easy quest. But definitely we are fully determined to try and give it a go. It would be just amazing. I can’t even describe how it will be.”

| Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free