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

“Foot to the floor, the lights are out.” There’s no chance Lando Norris thought this at the start of Formula 1’s 2024 Dutch Grand Prix he won for McLaren. Not in 0.28 seconds.

Home hero Max Verstappen had clocked the exact same time reacting to the start lights extinguishing at Zandvoort and, with his impressive pole position lap the day before, that should have been enough for Norris.

Analysis: Does Norris have a chance of winning the 2024 F1 title?

With overtaking at such a premium on this narrow, brilliantly brutal, old-school, seaside track, the pressure had been ratcheted up on this moment as soon as qualifying concluded. The statistics did the rest: Norris had secured a fourth F1 career pole but, considering he’d not managed to lead at the end of the opening lap from the previous three (plus when he’d headed the grid for a couple of sprints), the heat was on.

He’d done everything right when it mattered as the lights went out last Sunday. The extra eight metres at the head of the grid would surely see him through the oncoming 164-metre run to Tarzan. Alas, no.

Once again, as had struck Norris at Barcelona and Budapest, the second phase of the launch was to prove his undoing. That it not only turned out to be temporary but came with uncharted 2024 F1 territory – Red Bull humbled in a 23-second defeat 72 laps later – was remarkable. The stories couldn’t have been more different for the two standings leaders. Joyful scenes for the now two-time grand prix race winner, while the result was not how Verstappen would have wanted to end his 200th GP – with Red Bull ringing the alarm over his now 70-point championship lead.

It was the setting of this race that had sowed the seeds of the home star’s defeat. Grand old Zandvoort, on the edge of the North Sea, had showed just how the changing elements can characterise this event a year ago with that soaking thriller. This time, although the race was dry throughout, the weather once again played a major part. It just did so much earlier in the weekend.

Back on Friday, McLaren had been fielding questions about its floor edge, suspension fairing realignments, reshaped brake ducts, and new beam and rear wing updates to the MCL38. Given how well its last major package had worked in Miami in May, much was expected of the orange team’s subsequent developments.

McLaren arrived at Zandvoort with a raft of upgrades

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

“Hopefully, it's a decent chunk again, but it's less clear,” said chief designer Rob Marshall. “There's some things we're not so certain about, some things are slightly more risky than others…”

McLaren therefore back-to-back tested its new and old packages by applying the new parts just to Norris’s car in FP1 – a session that featured rain early on and wild winds of up to 50mph. That reduced the teams’ chances of assessing how the Pirellis would withstand a race stint around this 2.65-mile course with the faster cars of this year.

When the cars did get out for a typical dry-throughout FP2 session later on Friday afternoon, McLaren was impressively fast on the medium tyres that all the leaders would start the race on.

Pirelli had predicted that the extra grip the rather durable softs provided here might entice more teams to start on it and so was surprised “the majority of teams decided to tackle the first stint more cautiously”– according to its motorsport boss Mario Isola.

This was “given there was not much information available to them [after the wet practices],” he added.

“We took a little bit of a gamble. Because we thought the deg was going to be quite high. And so, we went up quite a lot on the downforce level, to maximum downforce" Christian Horner

McLaren’s FP2 medium tyre advantage came in at 0.555s over Red Bull, with Mercedes in the hunt on one-lap pace at this stage too. The nature of the Zandvoort layout plays to the long-established strengths of the MCL38, with its “high downforce, long corners”, per team boss Andrea Stella.

Although the Silver Arrows squad’s potential disappeared in the qualifying challenge of keeping the tyres cool enough to eke out the best lap times, Red Bull had the chance to alter its set-up in a bid to cut McLaren’s advantage.

It did so by adding its biggest available rear-wing package to Verstappen’s car from Saturday morning. FP3, then also being wet, prevented Red Bull from seeing if there might have been any disadvantages in its approach.

The wind was also making “every single lap just feel different” – per Verstappen in qualifying – which further hampered the considerable set-up adjustments Red Bull was making to try and find the best overall through-corner balance for the RB20s. Sergio Perez had revealed “we tested quite a bit out on track with set-up” on Friday.

Red Bull went large with its rear wing in the hope of cutting McLaren's advantage

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

“We took a little bit of a gamble,” Horner added of the rear wing choice, with Perez being given a smaller one. “Because we thought the deg was going to be quite high. And so, we went up quite a lot on the downforce level, to maximum downforce. And if the deg had been high, we felt it would help.”

Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko had said after qualifying that the team’s set-up choice had made Verstappen’s car “calmer”. This appeared to point to the Dutchman getting on terms with Norris over a race stint on Sunday.

But to get to see the reality play out, the leaders had to get through the start and Tarzan. And it couldn’t have been easier for Verstappen. Having reacted at the same time as the polesitting McLaren ahead, the Red Bull just powered by and took Turn 1 totally uncontested.

Marko: "Alarming" Norris victory over Verstappen proves threat to both F1 titles

The home crowd went wild – this was exactly what they’d been hoping for. But that Oscar Piastri suffered a near identical poor getaway to his McLaren team-mate suggested this clearly wasn’t down solely to driver error.

As he faced the media post-race, Stella claimed his lack of immediate pre-debrief information meant he couldn’t offer an explanation at this stage. But he highlighted again what he’d said post-qualifying amid all the speculation on Norris’s previous pole-to-win conversion rate.

That the starts all come down to a combination of “the drivers in terms of their launch procedure, execution, and a team point of view because there are some aspects which are under team control, and what kind of optimisation we are able to do”.

Marshall had claimed ahead of the race that McLaren was “not worried about our start performance”. But on leaving Zandvoort, Stella was reflecting “we do have to look very carefully into the details about why our competitor seems to gain a little bit on us”.

Despite McLaren and Norris brushing off concerns pre-race, it was another poor start from pole

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Red Bull’s intense work on improving its start systems in mid-to-late 2023 seems to be paying it back handily this season. And for Norris the solution for McLaren, glibly, is to “not get wheelspin”.

“We know what's required to do a perfect start,” he continued. “But we're talking about fine margins here. Because we both didn't get it right, it seems like maybe there was more underlying issues or something wasn't how it was supposed to be.

“Oscar's one of the best starters on the grid. I'm not as good as him – but there or thereabouts. I'm not a bad starter, but not as good as obviously what we need to be. Again, it was a race which almost slipped away off the line, but today was, again, different to every other thing that's happened [in 2024].”

"[I was] actually just surprisingly calm, maybe because I'm a bit used to going backwards at the start” Lando Norris

Indeed, Verstappen had shot to a 0.96s lead at the end of lap one and Marko was remembering how pre-race, Red Bull had believed, “if he wins the start, we can win the race”.

Things seemed unerringly familiar when Verstappen was able to pull clear of DRS threat when it was activated on lap two, but from there he didn’t disappear. Instead, Norris stuck with him. He was “actually just surprisingly calm, maybe because I'm a bit used to going backwards at the start”.

“I'm very prepared for those kind of scenarios,” he joked. “And I was very calm and just [thought], ‘OK, well, what can I do now?’ And that was just to look ahead, start saving tyres, see what I had pace-wise.

“I started to gain quite a bit of optimism that actually I could almost pass him on track.”

Norris remained confident that he could pass Verstappen on the track, and this confidence proved to be well placed

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Verstappen’s lead had reached a maximum of 1.5s on lap nine, but generally stuck around 1.3s. Then on the 12th tour, Norris was able to shave more than 0.3s from his advantage. Finally armed with DRS, he flew down the main straight each time – the aerodynamic efficiency gains all those updates had really been about seemingly apparent.

But it took four more laps of pressure before the gap came down dramatically again. With Norris attacking from 0.4s back at the 17th tour’s start, Verstappen was able to cover the inside run to Tarzan. But he was already aware the game was nearly up, telling engineer Gianpiero Lambiase “my tyres are numb – they don’t grip”.

The next time by at the start of lap 18, Verstappen’s lead as the pair flashed across the start/finish line was just 0.1s. Norris had just hoovered up his previous gap with that smaller (but still big) rear wing and, although there was a small jink of defence, there wasn’t the usual uber-level of Verstappen defence aggression.

Norris was ahead as they braked and, although Verstappen had speculative look at holding on around the outside, the lead was gone. And for good.

“Looking at Lando's data,” Stella said of the early laps where his charge ran second, “he still seemed to be pretty comfortable. He could be fast without having to abuse the car balance or abuse the tyres.

“So, there it became apparent that with this kind of pace, we could have overtaken – because Max was on a Monaco rear wing and we were on a relatively small rear wing. It became apparent, ‘let's not think about undercutting, because I think this situation will sort itself naturally with overtaking’.”

Red Bull’s wing gamble hadn’t paid off. Not only “as it turned out, the deg was low”, per Horner, but the more compliant McLaren in the crosswinds at Turns 1, 10 and 12 – that got stronger just as Norris passed – was just chewing through its rubber even less than the Red Bull.

Verstappen was left scratching his head after failing to win on home soil for the first time in F1

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Verstappen’s RB20 hadn’t been tweaked into a position where “tyre wear will probably be better”, as Marko had claimed on Saturday. And the wing “just made us slow in a straight line”, said Horner.

“He did the hard part at the start,” Horner added. “But pretty early on you could see Lando was very comfortable behind him and then obviously passed him pretty easy.”

There was still so much grand prix left to go, but the contest was just over at this point.

[Helmut] Marko reckoned Perez’s pace on the hards being “faster than Max” was the final proof that Red Bull had got it wrong on Verstappen’s wing level choice.

For a start, Norris had slinked off to a 5.7s lead by the time Verstappen pitted on lap 27 – to exchange mediums for hards – at a rate of 0.6s per lap. This comes in nearly a whole tenth up compared to McLaren’s FP2 advantage and Norris had the first 17 laps in dirty air. The extra sliding this added was shown up when Verstappen’s RB20 twitched noticeably as Norris was powering out of Tarzan ahead of the first time.

In FP2, both McLaren and Red Bull had ended their race simulations by sampling the softs, which had shown in Yuki Tsunoda’s hands here last year to be capable of 50 laps if temperatures were low enough. That they were 2C up on 2023 (in terms of ambient temperature) perhaps explains the general conservatism Isola highlighted earlier across the grid.

On the hard tyres for the second stint that he’d taken one tour after Verstappen, Norris remained faster, albeit at a slightly lower rate than before. Even around lapping everyone up to Alpine’s Pierre Gasly in ninth, he gapped Verstappen at a rate of 0.4s each time. Horner claimed Verstappen’s “pace thereafter [being passed], was just managing the race”.

Marko reckoned Perez’s pace on the hards being “faster than Max” was the final proof that Red Bull had got it wrong on Verstappen’s wing level choice. The Mexican’s average comes in at 1m15.135s verses his team-mate’s 1m15.093s (with Norris’s at 1m14.717s) for stint two, but Perez was getting quicker as his wore on, unlike Verstappen.

With Norris in the distance, Verstappen's 2nd place completed the mission set by Red Bull ahead of the Dutch GP

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“Max knew he couldn't beat Lando today,” Horner said afterwards. “The most important thing, that we discussed before the race, was, ‘If you can't beat him, make sure that we beat the rest of the field’. And I think at one point we were concerned about Piastri coming up very quickly…”

The second McLaren’s race had been very different to the one that ended up winning with the biggest victory margin so far in 2024 – a third triumph for an MCL38 that had been defeated by 48.5s against Verstappen back in Bahrain.

Piastri’s similarly sluggish getaway had left him running behind Mercedes’ George Russell through the first stint. He’d been caught off the line, then passed on the inside at Turn 1, while the fast-starting Charles Leclerc had also been able to threaten Piastri on the undulating run through Turns 4 and 5 after the McLaren had taken to the slower low line for Hugenholtz.

From there, Piastri spent the first stint bottled up slightly adrift of Russell. And, in a twist given he’d qualified 0.9s slower than Norris but perhaps not that surprising overall given this was the Monaco winner at a track where the Principality’s downforce levels were being cited elsewhere, Leclerc was applying pressure to the race-winning package too. He even tried to pass Piastri at Tarzan on the lap he stopped.

“It wasn’t straightforward to keep Leclerc behind,” Piastri said of his first stint trials.

Leclerc was the first of the frontrunners to pit on lap 24, with Russell coming in the next time by. Leclerc’s out-lap speed – even around catching and passing Fernando Alonso’s yet-to-stop Aston Martin – was enough to jump the Mercedes.

“We'd been struggling from Friday,” Leclerc explained afterwards. “In the race, we found some more pace, executed a perfect strategy – we undercut two of our competitors there.”

Having suggested a miracle was needed to score a podium, a perfect race from Leclerc and Ferrari proved that the Scuderia are still in the mix

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Because McLaren left Piastri out for eight laps after Russell had come in to take the hards Leclerc was now on, the Australian spent four tours in the lead once Verstappen and Norris had come in.

This enabled Piastri to briefly reach the high 1m15s bracket Norris had been doing before stopping, but the temporarily leading McLaren couldn’t hold it as consistently – and behind the hard tyre was proving to be fast and resilient. Leclerc’s pace had generally been in the low 1m15s with fresh rubber and Piastri emerged behind the Ferrari and Russell.

But, given the major tyre-life offset the later stop had created over his rivals and the way he erased Russell’s four-second advantage in six laps before getting by with a mighty hold around the outside at Tarzan, a McLaren double podium seemed a near certainty. And Piastri’s pace was bothering Red Bull concerning Verstappen’s spot too.

But here, after taking five laps to reach DRS range to the Ferrari ahead, Leclerc proved to be a stumbling block.

“I did not expect to keep that third place until the end, but we did a really good job as a team. I don't think there was anything more we could have done today" Charles Leclerc

“My engineer was telling me about Oscar's lap time, which when he was in free air was quite a bit quicker than me, I think nearly a second,” Leclerc explained of the period when Piastri had been lapping in the mid-1m14s (Norris wasn’t even doing this consistently at this stage) in hot pursuit.

“Then when he got closer, I started to push a bit more and gain five tenths. And I think with the dirty air, he probably lost three or four tenths. He managed to stay behind and to put me quite under pressure for two, three laps, but then couldn't stay there because of the overheating.”

Indeed, Piastri fell out of DRS threat on lap 52 and, although he briefly regained it, in the end, he came in 1.9s down on the lead Ferrari.

“It was a really good strategy,” reflected Leclerc. “I did not expect to keep that third place until the end, but we did a really good job as a team. I don't think there was anything more we could have done today.”

Leclerc's success came at Piastri's expense

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur reckoned “we are in a better shape on the long stint, and on tyre management”. But for Stella, Piastri’s result was “a significant missed opportunity”.

“[The start] did cost us,” Stella concluded. “Because I think with Oscar if we had not lost the position, I think it would be a different race. Oscar had the pace to beat Max.”

Although afterwards Norris said discussing a potential title surge was “pretty stupid to think of anything at the minute”, the dominant nature of his victory and McLaren’s consistent upgrade hits have lit the touch paper of possibility now the 2024 title run-in has kicked off.

To underline just how good he was here, Norris set the race’s fastest lap by 0.061s on hards that had already done 43 pounding laps. He hadn’t asked McLaren for permission; he knew what the answer would’ve been…

Norris had pace to burn at the chequered flag, setting the fastest lap on the final tour

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images