Lando Norris: McLaren has the best car

Lando Norris won the Dutch Grand Prix and reached the top of the podium for the second time in his career. After the finish, the McLaren driver commented on the results of the weekend in Zandvoort and answered questions.

Q: Lando, congratulations on your great flying experience. How satisfied are you with your performance?
Lando Norris: Winning is always satisfying, so everything is great. Of course the mood after the start was not too optimistic, but the pace was incredible and I was able to stay behind Max. I didn’t expect us to be so fast, but the speed was good. It’s nice to receive such surprises.

After I got the lead again, the race was quite easy. I was able to attack the whole race, had confidence, took care of the tires a bit and drove at my own pace. The car drove great and made my job a lot easier, so a big thank you to the team.

Q: Zandvoort hasn’t really suited McLaren in recent years. Have you done well with the new products the team has brought to this stage?
Lando Norris: New items didn’t have much impact this weekend. I feel like I would have won without them. They didn’t make us much faster on this track, but every time we put new parts on the car it helps. This is not at all a situation where we ask something and ask questions. The new products worked exactly as we expected.

This is our first big update to the car after the Miami stage. Yes, in the rest of the races we had some small things, but they didn’t affect the speed at all. Compared to our rivals, we don’t bring new things that often, and Zandvoort was the first time in a long time that we put something on the car that allowed us to take a step forward.

I’m not saying we weren’t competitive in the last two months after Miami. We were fastest in Budapest and looked good at other tracks. For example in Barcelona and Silverstone. But the little things make a big difference. And I’m sure the car made a step forward in Zandvoort. You know, the new rear wing probably helped me overtake Max. Small improvements definitely help forward.

Q: After the start, when Max overtook you, were you sure you would win?
Lando Norris: No. But after the training we were confident that we had a good pace. My pace over the long series of laps on Friday was very good, but there was no possibility to test it over a longer distance than 10-11 laps. You never know what the dynamics will be over a distance of 72 laps.

I have to say Max’s pace didn’t look bad on Friday. It wasn’t that we thought we could easily overtake him on track, but in the race we did.

I have to say that I am not leading that often, so I can’t always do what I want, take care of the tires, drive on an empty track, etc. But all these factors led to this result in the end. But I didn’t expect everything to turn out so well.

Once I was behind after the first corner I remained surprisingly calm. Maybe this is because I was used to losing positions at the start and was ready for such a development of events

So I stayed very calm and thought: “Okay, what can I do?” And I started to take care of the tires and evaluate what pace I could count on. But already on the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th lap I started to overtake Max, which made me more optimistic. I started to think that I could overtake him on the track. For this I had two possibilities. The first time I was not close enough, but on the next lap everything was fine.

Q: What should be done to prevent startup problems in the future?
Lando Norris: Get rid of wheel slip.

Q: Sounds like a pretty simple solution, but do you know how to implement it?
Lando Norris: Of course not, otherwise I would have had a better start. But we know what it takes to have a perfect start. But now we are talking about details. Since Oscar and I both didn’t start so well, there was probably a deeper problem, or we had misjudged something.

Oscar is one of the best specialists in starts, but I am not so good compared to him. I do not say that I have a bad start, but not as good as it should be. I already said before this weekend that we need to achieve more stability. We are working on it and I feel that I have completed all the procedures better, but of course not everything has worked out yet.

Q: Let’s talk about the upcoming stage in Monza. Do you think you will be as competitive as you were in Zandvoort?
Lando Norris: I have no idea. You are asking questions that imply that we should know the answers, but I don’t. Anyone can be ahead: Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull, us. The Ferraris were quite fast in the race. We didn’t expect them to be that good. Red Bull may have more problems than expected. That was probably a factor.

We have to keep working. There is no point in thinking about what might happen next weekend. Let’s see where we are. There is no point in getting ahead of ourselves.

Q: Can we say that McLaren has the best car at the moment?
Lando Norris: Yes, 100%. This weekend our car was the best. I think on average we have the best car. It was never dominant. Even if we remember Hungary, and many will not like what I say now, Max was very fast in Hungary. He just did not have a very successful race, but he had a very high pace.

We have more information than outsiders, so we comment on something based on more facts than those who watch TV and guess. Overall, we have the best car and we could have won two or three more races, but we didn’t. And they couldn’t because they didn’t do their job well enough; I didn’t do it well enough.

The team worked hard during the summer break to take a step back, reset and try again. Yes, we have a great car, and as I said before, for the first time since the Miami leg, we brought new products that worked great.

There is still a long way to go. We have to keep working hard because it was only Zandvoort. Monza is a completely different circuit, so we keep working on ourselves.