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ZANDVOORT, Netherlands — After entering Formula One’s summer break as the form team, McLaren returned to the track on Friday at Zandvoort, eager to regain momentum.
The 154 points accumulated from Spain to Belgium turned it from a plucky challenger hoping to snare a couple of race wins to a genuine threat to Red Bull for the constructors’ championship with 10 races remaining.
The current 42-point gap atop the constructors’ standings could have been even smaller had McLaren grabbed every chance that came its way in recent races. Lando Norris, often his own harshest critic, acknowledged during Thursday’s media day that he’d missed opportunities for more, hindering his drivers’ championship pursuit of Max Verstappen. Norris trails by 78 points with one win this season at Miami but has finished in second place five times.
“In the first half of the season, I’ve not performed at the level of a world champion, it’s as simple as that,” Norris said. “At times, I have, and many races I have done. But also, little things have just let me down along the way, and those are the things I cannot afford.”
Team principal Andrea Stella, one of the catalysts in McLaren’s transformation from backmarker to pack leader in the last 18 months, wasn’t so severe speaking on Friday. He pointed out how self-critical Norris can be and his tendency to look at the glass half-empty, but he appreciated his determination to be the best.
“He definitely has the potential of a world champion, and he’s performing at world championship level,” Stella said. “If we compare against perfection, then definitely we have opportunities (to improve).
“But I like that we compare ourselves against perfection because this is what we need to do.”
That’s where McLaren’s focus is in the bid to catch Red Bull for the title. It’s a scenario that seemed unfathomable even as recently as three months ago, given Verstappen’s dominant start to the season and the daunting points gap that emerged at the top of both championships. But Red Bull struggled to find much time with its car through its recent developments, and Sergio Pérez’s dwindling form left Verstappen to essentially fight Norris and Oscar Piastri alone. McLaren now has a shot at its first constructors’ title in 25 years.
‘Perfection’ is something the great championship-winning teams all manage to find. The recent dominant forces in F1 — the Ferrari of the early 2000s, the Red Bull of the early 2010s, Mercedes’ subsequent record sweep of eight titles from 2014 to 2021, and the Red Bull of the past three years — all got to points where they operated with such precision, such slickness that they seemed impossible to beat.
Norris looked fast again in practice at the Dutch GP on Friday. (SIMON WOHLFAHRT/AFP via Getty Images)
Those teams also went through growing pains to get to that stage, seeing opportunities to win races slip away in the years leading up to that domination beginning. They had to learn how to become great. How to become perfect.
Discussing Norris’s championship chances as he bids to close down the gap to Verstappen, Stella pointed to areas the British driver could improve, such as the starts and the opening laps (Norris has lost the lead on the first lap on all five occasions he’s started from P1 in F1). Stella said the team had to play a part in this, too.
“He had a couple of situations in the races in which he might have taken some of the responsibility, but I think it was the team’s responsibility,” Stella said. “Like if I think of Canada, a case in which we didn’t pit Lando before the late safety car before the pit entry, or if I think about Silverstone and the final stint, that’s the team’s responsibility.
“If the team had operated at higher standards, then I think Lando would have more points in the championship.”
Norris would also have some more points had McLaren taken the super-ruthless approach of prioritizing him over Piastri as early as possible. Norris challenged McLaren’s request for him to give up the lead in Hungary, leaving it until the very final stages to give back the place, and even noted his championship chances then. It was a situation McLaren later acknowledged it had not anticipated. As Stella put it at Spa, “We should have prepared the situation better before the race so that you never find yourself preparing the flight plan as you fly.”
Stella made clear in the fallout from Hungary that he did not foresee a time when McLaren would have to strictly intervene to prioritize one driver over the other in the championship. Even throughout the team’s debriefs over the summer break, Stella said there was no direct intervention to say it was now time to back Norris, believing it was not a good way to go racing.
He instead stressed the need for fairness and integrity in McLaren’s approach and that if Norris kept performing at a high level on track, then a championship chance – and the associated discussions – would naturally come his way. “But it will always have to be a conversation before the race,” Stella said. “Nobody should be surprised. We all should be in agreement because, ultimately, we chase and we are in the quest for a drivers’ world championship as a team.” Stella said it would remain a “case-by-case” situation.
One boost for Norris and McLaren’s title hopes arrived at Zandvoort as the team unveiled its first major upgrade package since Miami when it overhauled the car and vaulted forward for performance. This includes a revised front brake scoop, front and rear suspension, an updated floor, and a new rear wing and beam wing to suit the high downforce requirements at Zandvoort.
Stella said the package was “nowhere near as large as the one that we took to Miami, but it should be hopefully noticeable in terms of aerodynamic efficiency of the car.”
Piastri and Norris ran split specifications in FP1 at Zandvoort to aid the evaluation of the updates before both used the new package in the second practice, where they finished P2 and P4, respectively. The fine margins seen before the summer break continued as only three-tenths of a second covered both Mercedes, McLarens and Verstappen, a reminder of how critical every extra bit of performance can be.
“We’ve been in good form since Miami, but we’ve not really brought any updates since Miami,” Norris said after FP2. “This weekend is our first time trying to make a bit more progress with the car. So (I’m) optimistic, but I have no idea if it’s working or not or how it’s performing at the minute. Today was a reasonable day, and we’re there or thereabouts.”
There is zero doubt that Norris and McLaren can fight for a championship. Whether it is this one, given the gap to Verstappen and the required swings over the final 10 races, is something the upcoming races will reveal to McLaren.
“We are chasing Max Verstappen,” Stella said. “Definitely, he is not going to make it easy for us. But we are excited to be in this position.”
Top photo: Clive Rose/Getty Images
