Max Verstappen noticed Lando Norris’s “wheelspin” as they discussed the McLaren driver’s yet another difficult start at the Dutch Grand Prix.
Race starts were highlighted as an area for improvement for Norris in F1 2024; his start at the Dutch Grand Prix was also less than optimal and he fell behind Verstappen.
Max Verstappen talks about Lando Norris’ ‘wheel spinning’ at the Dutch GP
Norris dramatically rectified the damage by overtaking Verstappen again at Turn 1 on lap 18 and never looked back from then on to win the Dutch Grand Prix by a margin of almost 23 seconds.
This was the first victory at Zandvoort without a Max Verstappen win since the track was reinstated on the calendar in 2021.
And as the drivers headed to the cooling room, Verstappen started a conversation with Norris about the start of the race, claiming that the grip was too low.
“A little bit of spinning?” Verstappen asked Norris, to which Norris replied: “Right away!”
Verstappen added: “But I noticed at the start that the grip in general was very low.”
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After overtaking Verstappen, Norris was able to increase the lead to five seconds, but it was only in the second and final stint, after swapping the medium tires for the hards, that Norris was able to significantly increase the gap to Verstappen, achieving the final lead of 22.896 seconds for victory.
“You weren’t fast? Mercedes?” Norris asked Verstappen. George Russell finished the best in P7 in the Mercedes, while Lewis Hamilton fought his way up to P8.
“Not on the hard tyres,” Verstappen replied. “On the medium tyres it was OK, but on the hard tyres…”
Before Norris’ arrival, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who completed the podium, asked a question that Verstappen probably would not have liked to answer when he asked at the end: “How far were you?”
“20 seconds or so, 22 seconds,” he confirmed.
Immediately after the race, Verstappen admitted that Red Bull was simply “not fast enough” today, so he had to focus on P2.
When asked if this was not the hoped-for result, Verstappen replied: “Well, we always try to do better.
“We had a good start and tried everything we could today. But as the race went on, I think it was pretty clear that we weren’t fast enough. So I tried to finish second today.
“I know we have good starts, so I was pretty confident we would get another one. And luckily we did.”
“And then, yeah, I just tried to run my own race, and that was my race, and I was second today.”
Norris also set the fastest lap and scored a perfect 26 points, reducing Verstappen’s lead in the drivers’ championship to 70 points.
Read more – Dutch GP: Lando Norris defeats Max Verstappen and inflicts his first defeat in Zandvoort
