Why it wasn't just Russell's start that cost Norris the Spanish GP victory

“We need to leave now.”

Little did Autosport know when McLaren press attaché Harry Bull’s hand came gently but firmly down upon our right shoulder that we were on the cusp of witnessing all the good that Formula 1 can offer.

Just 27 hours before Lando Norris so nearly won the 2024 Spanish Grand Prix against who else but Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, his McLaren squad was facing unexpected, serious, jeopardy.

The first signs were the lights going out inside the team’s giant Hub motorhome as midday approached on Saturday. Then came hurried shouts preceding the instructions for all to exit. The smoke followed – its smell hanging horribly and persistently in the air around the empty two-story structure for the rest of the weekend in the way only an electrical fire can.

Norris left the upper level without time to put on his shoes. First Alpine, then Aston Martin team members and even Pirelli motorsport boss Mario Isola came charging in with additional fire extinguishers before Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya marshals and fire staff converged.

Thankfully only one McLaren team member needed hospital assessment and they were discharged by Saturday evening. The team relocated its drivers to rooms in its engineering trucks. Its communications team decamped to the FIA’s massive motorhome. Meals were consumed in the team garage. Through it all, they persevered.

The F1 paddock rallied around McLaren following its motorhome fire

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

“The assistance, the solidarity, the sympathy, the support we received from each and every one of all the other teams, F1, FIA – that gave us a genuine true emotion,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella would later reflect. “Sometimes we forget, because we are here to compete with each other, but I think when it manifests itself in this way, we should remember that that's the case.

“The feeling at McLaren is, we're really impressed by the sense of community – the support that we have received and this has made the execution of the weekend, obviously, more simple. We could keep our focus on racing because we were taken care [of].”

On Sunday, McLaren and Norris engaged in a tense contest for the Barcelona win. There was brilliant passing, strategic nous and two of F1’s best going ferociously wheel-to-wheel, then each charging to the finish. The sporting good followed the goodwill wonderfully.

"My initial launch was better than Max. The second phase, the drive out, was not as good"
Lando Norris

Norris had gotten things underway on this front with his brilliant effort to pip Verstappen to pole by just 0.020 seconds. Having been able to live with the McLaren bouncing mid-corner through Barcelona’s fastest turns, Norris claimed his second career F1 pole. Verstappen, for the first time in an age, looked anxious.

Not so in the opening few seconds of the race the next day. Lining up ahead of Mercedes pair Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, the two friends occupied the first row for the second time in four races.

Norris had long vowed to make life harder for Verstappen if there was a prize at stake. And so, having reacted well enough before the RB20 accelerated quicker in the second phase leaving the grid, he acted.

Across came the McLaren, squeezing the Red Bull ever more towards the grass-lined pitwall. Its front wheels were alongside the McLaren’s rears and, with Norris not giving up, the right-side skipped across the grass Verstappen had mistaken for asphalt.

“My initial launch was better than Max,” Norris explained. “The second phase, the drive out, was not as good…”

As Norris and Verstappen jockeyed for position into the first corner, Russell swept ahead of both on the outside line

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

The pair raced down the 0.36-mile, steep dive to Barcelona’s first corners. Norris edged fractionally further ahead as they did so, then moved back towards the racing line. But suddenly Verstappen wasn’t his biggest problem. A race-defining moment was already upon this contest.

Russell had launched past Hamilton immediately, then, picking up the slipstream from the nearly conjoined leaders, he shot ahead on the outside line. Here, two important factors aided his shock surge to the lead. The first was braking on the rubbered-in racing line. The second was how “we had a headwind, so I knew I could brake quite late”, Russell explained post-race.

As Russell steamed around the outside of the front-row pair, Norris still had Verstappen on his inside. Pinched and fearing “if I brake two metres later, I would have taken everyone out with me”, Norris backed out and “let George have it”.

At the same time, Verstappen, who enjoyed the “hard racing” element of Norris’s start defence once his win was secure, was still in play on the inside. As Norris backed out, the Dutchman surged ahead and chased Russell.

“We were quite late into Turn 1,” he said. “But then I was quite determined to try and get the lead.”

His resolve was galvanised by a call from engineer Gianpiero Lambiase as the leaders rounded the Turn 10 hairpin on the second lap. This was for Verstappen to consider “wisely” attacking, which he did at the start of the third tour.

With DRS activated immediately, Verstappen closed a 0.6s gap running down to Turn 1 and attacked around the Mercedes’ outside. Russell held on, but his tighter line sapped momentum and Verstappen was gone.

This was important. Both Verstappen and Red Bull had feared the consequences of being stuck behind another car. At this stage, not only was Norris still looming, but after just a few laps of chasing and sliding in dirty air, Verstappen knew his tyres would rapidly overheat and degrade considerably.

Verstappen didn't spend long behind Russell before claiming the lead on lap three

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

“Once I was in the lead,” he explained. “I could look after my tyres a bit better, and that definitely made my race.”

At the end of lap third of 66, Verstappen was 1.1s clear of Russell. He extended this by an average of 0.25s over the next 11 tours, reaching a high of 3.8s. It wasn’t all plain sailing – Verstappen nearly dropping it at Turn 8 on lap 12.

Russell kicked off the services for the leaders as he pitted to exchange the soft tyres they’d all started on for mediums on lap 15. McLaren asked Norris if it should cover Russell immediately, but he was resolute already: “No, we need to go and get Max.”

Russell left Norris “quite surprised” by reattacking immediately at Turn 4 – extending the battle by moving back alongside through the right-hand hairpin until Norris swept ahead for good at the Turns 7/8 chicane

The possibility of that happening any time soon looked remote given the leader’s early march clear, but it wasn’t inconceivable given Norris had shrunk Verstappen’s 5.6s lead after Russell pitted out of his way to 4.8s by the time Red Bull stopped the leader for his mediums on lap 17. Verstappen called this strategy “aggressive”.

Here McLaren knew what to do. Stella said his team “were very surprised when we saw people go in lap 16-17”.

“For me, that's a bit of self-inflicted pain at this circuit,” he added. “Because the degradation is so high, overtaking is easy. We actually thought, ‘This is going to bring us back in the race…’”

So, Norris was left out to build a tyre-life offset to Verstappen – his only chance of closing the gap his time “stuck” behind Russell had allowed to swell. He pounded around for another six tours, with his pace on the ageing softs holding in the 1m20s bracket Verstappen had lost before pitting. Only Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc – never a victory contender this time as the Scuderia struggled with getting the best from the tyres – went longer on the first stint.

Norris extended his opening stint after first Russell, then Verstappen made early stops to ditch their starting softs

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Norris eventually came in on lap 23 – his service for mediums lasting 2.4s compared to Verstappen’s 1.9s. Every tenth would ultimately end up critical and the McLaren emerged with plenty of work left.

Norris was now running behind not just the two Mercedes cars, but Carlos Sainz too, thanks to the considerable undercut power around here. This was exacerbated by the race day temperatures coming in hotter than many in the paddock had expected. He took three laps to catch the home hero, then passed him with DRS in Turn 1.

Hamilton was next, with Norris pressing him into two track limits ‘strikes’ at Turn 5 and an early Turn 1 defence the tour before another simple DRS pass was made into the same corner for the McLaren to retake third.

Then Russell was finally despatched with a superb power punch around Barcelona’s famous Turn 3 on lap 35. Except, Russell wasn’t finished. He left Norris “quite surprised” by reattacking immediately at Turn 4 – extending the battle by moving back alongside through the right-hand hairpin and staying there all the way until Norris finally swept ahead for good at the Turn 7/8 chicane.

“I had so much understeer in Turn 4 all day,” Norris said of this moment. “And the Mercs had a lot of front end in Turn 4. He could carry a lot more speed in 4, get back to the outside, but then I could cut back on Turn 5 on the exit and get him into Turn 7.

“It was a good fight. It cost me a lot of time and hurt my gap to Max in the end. But yeah, it was pleasant. It was on the edge, was close, but respectful.”

The lead gap here stood at 9.3s. Would Verstappen’s typical tyre-maintaining prowess end the contest with half the race still to run? Or could Norris unleash something different with those six-lap younger mediums?

It was to be the latter. Over the next eight tours, Norris halved Verstappen’s lead at a rate of 0.57s a lap. When the Dutchman stopped for a second time on lap 44, Norris had actually shrunk the gap under the maximum lead Verstappen had enjoyed over him in the first stint.

Norris had to clear Sainz and Hamilton before getting back to Russell, although even with his tyre offset the move took several corners to play out

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

For the first time, Red Bull looked really vulnerable. Not only was the McLaren quicker, but Verstappen’s squad had completed a relatively lengthy second service in switching him back to the softs: 2.8s.

Again, Norris cycled to the lead. McLaren asked him to make certain he would be able to pass the Mercedes cars if the undercut factor again came into play. Norris was initially certain before doubt crept in.

“Depends if we want to finish first or third?” he asked his engineer, Will Joseph. But the subtext was clear: the upside of retaining the tyre-life offset for the run to the flag was a victory shot, so Norris was prepared to make more moves on the Mercedes drivers. It didn’t matter, however.

Over the first five laps of Norris’s final stint, he brought Verstappen’s lead down to 5.3s. Then Norris actually lost 0.5s over the next two laps

What did was how a slow right-rear tyre change meant Norris’s stop lasted 3.6s – a net 0.8s loss on the rare occasion Red Bull left time available in the pitlane.

Both leaders had returned to the softs, as did Hamilton for what was to prove a pivotal final stint in reclaiming third against Russell, which he did with a forceful move at Turn 1 on lap 52. Russell had been the only frontrunner to try the hard tyre for the last stint, which he felt "was pretty rubbish".

“Soft and medium delivered the best performance,” explained Isola. “Despite the higher temperatures, the hard struggled a bit in terms of overall performance, while not offering a decisive advantage when it came to degradation.”

Norris had one more moment of Mercedes menace when he’d followed his delayed second stop by barely getting out of the pitlane ahead of Russell as the 48th tour commenced. When he came back around, he faced a 7.7s deficit to Verstappen ahead.

Here Norris “was feeling good”, his only question the same as everyone else’s: “could I close the gap in the amount of laps that I had?”

A delay on Norris's right-rear at the second stops meant McLaren failed to capitalise on Verstappen's earlier sluggish turnaround

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Over the first five laps of Norris’s final stint, he brought Verstappen’s lead down to 5.3s. Then, with Lambiasie urging his charge to “push to the end”, Norris actually lost 0.5s over the next two laps. Red Bull could see that Norris “wasn't saving anything in Turn 3 and Turn 9, and the last two turns” – according to team boss Christian Horner.

“The information was given to Max to say, ‘You can start pushing’,” Horner continued. “And he's got such capacity in his driving. He knows the stint length; he knows what he needs to take out of the tyres – and that's where he really is a masterclass.”

But it was still a close-run thing. Over the final 11 laps, Norris’s speed increased again – as he cut a further 3.7s from Verstappen’s lead at a 0.33s superior average, with the McLaren driver typically rapid in the first two sectors before the Red Bull responded in the last.

All the while Norris hoped to “get a couple of DRSs from backmarkers [Lance Stroll, Zhou Guanyu and, unbelievably here, Spain’s Fernando Alonso] and hopefully they could help me out a little bit to try and catch up”. But it wasn’t enough.

Verstappen held on – winning by 2.219s to take his seventh victory of the campaign and the third with Norris under four seconds behind. All told, Norris shipped 1.3s in the pits.

“The car was incredible today,” he said in parc ferme, having climbed from a car with a smaller rear wing compared to Verstappen’s, which would’ve come at tyre life cost with additional sliding. “For sure, the quickest. I just lost it in the beginning…”

“I think as a whole package, performance, we had a good race,” reflected Verstappen, who had switched from a lower-downforce rear wing to aid tyre preservation after Friday practice. “We really tried to maximise everything. But I do think that we were struggling a bit for the optimum pace, lacking a bit of tyre deg towards the end of every stint.

“So, it wasn't a very straightforward, easy race. Lando was catching quite hard at the end. But luckily, it worked out that it was just enough.”

Verstappen again took a narrow win over Norris, as he has done already this season at Imola and Canada

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

When asked in the post-race press conference if he thought a shot at 2024 world title glory is on now he’s up to second in the standings ahead of fifth-place Barcelona finisher Leclerc, Norris replied: “I think so.

“We should have done better today. We should have got some points back on Max. Potentially, there was a chance to beat him in Canada. So, two races that I finished second and he's won. But Max needs to stop winning in order to achieve that.

“Even though I moved into second in the championship, that doesn't matter. I couldn't care if I was second or 10th. It's more about the gap to what Max is and he's still extending it at the minute. That's something we can't afford – to kind of let him run away with it at this point of the season.

"Max drove a perfect race. It's all those small details"
Christian Horner

“But we can do [it]. We have what it takes. It's just about putting it all together.”

Horner said Red Bull had looked at Verstappen’s initial stint two gap and thought, “'Oh, nine seconds looks pretty decent', but with a tyre offset of six laps on a medium, and then three or four on the soft, those gaps come back at you pretty quickly.”

“So, it was all about not making any mistakes,” added Horner, who also revealed Red Bull had been struggling with a radio issue all weekend in Spain, which explained Verstappen’s lap 54 confusion over Lambiase's engine setting instruction.

“Max drove a perfect race. It's all those small details. We knew that Lando would come back towards us at the end of the race, but we felt we should have just enough at hand, which is the way it played out.”

This had been a contest between two of F1’s best drivers, where each showcased their supreme abilities. Norris had one final talent to produce: his innate, deep, self-reflection.

Horner believes Verstappen drove a perfect race despite the handicaps of radio problems

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

“I think really like the last three laps, the gaps were pretty big in terms of how much it was coming down,” he concluded. ‘It's a hard one. I don't know if maybe I pushed a bit too much in the beginning [of the final stint] and struggled a little bit more at the end. It's very difficult to judge these things.”

After returning to the track on used softs – another critical difference in that Verstappen was running new softs at this late stage, with the pair having the same tyre allocation heading into the race – Norris had tried to bed them in. He first produced a 1m17.3s before backing off to a 1m17.9s. Then he clocked the race’s fastest lap at 1m17.115s.

But he never got back to such a pace again. The tyres retain heat when a driver presses on without taking a margin – especially in the highest-speed corners here – and that comes at a cost of shedding grip.

Verstappen was even slower in the 1m19s over the final three laps, but Norris had lost the edge that might’ve kept him in the 1m17s. That, plus the pitstop losses, stopped him ever getting within DRS threat.

But this was still a performance that had Red Bull rattled. And with “two of my favourite tracks in terms of performances and where we've performed well at [previously]” coming up for Norris in Austria and Britain, it’s tantalisingly onwards for F1.

Norris believes he pushed too hard on his used softs at the start of his final stint, as small margins added up to tip the scales in Verstappen's favour

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images