The bite Norris showed at Zandvoort that paid him back handsomely

They were delivered with his trademark smile and gushing style, but there was a biting note to much of what Lando Norris had to say at Formula 1’s 2024 Dutch Grand Prix.

The memory of his stunning pole lap and even better overall race performance will be what this event goes down for. After all, Norris’s on Sunday was the biggest margin of victory clocked so far in 2024 (albeit ahead of the Max Verstappen-led Red Bull 1-2 in Bahrain, where the next non-RB20 came in 25.1s down).

PLUS: The Red Bull mistake that let McLaren's poor Zandvoort start off the hook

But the underlying message in Norris’s attitude last weekend mattered too. Particularly if this is a true sign of things to come in the 2024 title run-in – where McLaren team boss Andrea Stella said his squad is aiming to do what Sebastian Vettel "did in 2013”.

That year, the former Red Bull star won nine times in a row to close out the season, the only example of that happening in the modern era. Red Bull’s Singapore stumbled stopped Verstappen repeating Vettel’s feat in 2023, plus enhancing it given how well he’d been going before that year’s summer break too.

After Norris had topped qualifying at Zandvoort, F1TV commentator Jolyon Palmer had pointed out “it's a shorter run to the first corner than Barcelona and Budapest – can you hang on to it?” – to which Norris replied, quick as a flash: “I don't know why you're saying that”.

FIA press conference host Tom Clarkson’s enquiry of how McLaren might improve its starts got a deadpan "not get wheelspin" response. And PA’s correspondent was told “I know you want that little headline right there, but I'm not going to give it to you” in response to a question asking if Norris had been “desperate” to win here given his Barcelona and Budapest defeats from pole (plus those Brazil 2023 and China 2024 sprint grid-heading drops).

Perhaps Norris is just sick of facing the media now McLaren is firmly on the up. A nice problem to have, of course, but there was more to this weekend than just getting high enough in the qualifying and race classifications that a driver’s media commitments expand as per F1’s rules.

Lando Norris took pole but again lost out into Turn 1

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

These were statement results from Norris and McLaren. Sure, it was on ground where the MCL38 just excels with Zandvoort’s long corners and high-downforce requirements, but Norris was supreme. His consistency in race pace was stunning, while in qualifying – where it must be said Verstappen with the now recalcitrant RB20 was also excellent to reach the front row of the grid ahead of Oscar Piastri – he was brilliant.

Earlier in the year, he’d identified eliminating mistakes when on the edge against the clock to Autosport as an area where he still wanted to improve, and the tyre management art Verstappen came to perfect is also somewhere those wanting to be world champion always need to work on.

Norris was excellent in both these respects last weekend. This was evidenced both by that brilliant Q3 lap to bust the 1m10s barrier and how he’d enough tyre life left to successfully chase the race’s fastest lap even on ancient hards on the last tour.

He alluded to working “hard over the summer” after topping qualifying and said that “little bits are paying off already”. Clearly.

“I'm a bit used to going backwards at the start,” Lando Norris

But with more than a touch of inevitability, there was still one thing that left McLaren frustrated last weekend: its race starts.

Norris joked that “I'm a bit used to going backwards at the start” and so was able to stay unruffled as he chased Verstappen early in the race before blasting back by. It’s interesting to note here that practice starts are not allowed at the pit exit due to the track’s narrow confines and so had to be done solely on the grid. The weekend’s regular rain bursts meant no one got consistent grip rate in their data analysis, but McLaren really must now make starts a point of focus to solve as quickly as possible.

It could be it concludes, as Norris suggested in the post-race press conference, that “we've clearly misjudged something more than what others did”. That McLaren’s Zandvoort getaways were just worse than other ‘bad’ starts around them. But at least Piastri’s similar struggle from the second row demonstrated this was not Norris bottling a big chance.

Both McLarens lost ground off the line as Verstappen led

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Norris claimed Piastri is “one of the best starters on the grid – I'm not as good as him, but there or thereabouts”. This backs up the point that what did go wrong wasn’t solely down to the MCL38’s pilots.

A cynic might claim that by highlighting this, Norris enhances his own reputation, but given he’s openly told me that Piastri seems to overthink less at the limit in qualifying, with the implication this is a strength for his team-mate, this must gone down as another part of Norris’s famously open character.

He and McLaren now head to Monza. Norris, again, with a note of chippiness, said post-race in Zandvoort that “I've been fighting for the championship since the first race of the year”.

But the fast-arriving Italian GP is the biggest test of such worthy ambition.

Monza’s long straights are perfect RB20 territory with its well-bred aerodynamic efficiency design. There will likely also be little of the random, strong wind problem that so unsettled Verstappen’s machine last weekend. Ferrari was a huge threat for the win at its home race a year ago and will be unleashing another upgrade package in a bid to recover its winning ways in front of the Tifosi too.

But McLaren’s Zandvoort upgrade was all about matching Red Bull’s long-held aero efficiency prowess and the GPS trace data from qualifying (compared with that logged at the most recent high downforce track, Hungary, and the finally dry stages of qualifying in the 2023 Dutch GP) suggest it has gone some way to succeeding. Norris was quicker down the straights than Verstappen and essentially on par with Sergio Perez running a smaller rear-wing package.

McLaren isn’t getting carried away. Stella claims “the car in the current configuration is possibly not enough in terms of the performance required to be the best car at every single event”, and there are major layout changes (wider approach to the Rettifilo chicane, newly banked Lesmos, new kerbs at Ascari) and new asphalt for all the teams to contend with at Monza, as part of €21m venue refurb for 2024.

Red Bull is expected to be the benchmark at efficiency-focused Monza

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

Red Bull also “struggled a bit more than we were expecting” last weekend, as Norris acknowledges. But any sportsperson can only play what’s put in front of them and he totally smashed it at Zandvoort.

Norris did it being Norris. Still highly self-critical, but that has now been proven time and again to work well for him. There will be more probing questions to field if he truly is on course to catch Verstappen – this year or next – but this is Norris, as good as he’s always looked like being, in his own way and words.

Norris's victory has opened the championship race up

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images