Lando Norris messed up the start but won the Dutch Grand Prix in a paroxysm of relief and redemption. And so a world championship fight that many had consigned to the dustbin of history is alive and kicking.
There was a definite sense of a chance opening for the Briton with this triumph on enemy territory in front of a 105,000 crowd, the vast majority of whom were cheering for their own hero, the biggest sports star in Holland, Max Verstappen.
The Dutchman ended up in second place and lies 70 points ahead of Norris with nine rounds remaining. Norris would swap his haul for Max’s, of course, but he would no longer trade in his McLaren for the Red Bull that only a few months ago was impregnable.
All credit to McLaren for their improvement in leaps and bounds during the season. It’s testimony to chief executive Zak Brown’s perception in having found in team principal Andrea Stella a methodical engineer to lead their technical revolution.
This work allowed Norris to brush aside his woeful start that enduced cheers from the flag-waving partisans in the stands. And it was a truly awful start. He reacted as fast as Verstappen – 0.28sec – but then it was if he was standing in glue during the second phase.
Lando Norris managed to win the Dutch Grand Prix despite having lost the lead
Norris managed to recover and see off the threat of Max Verstappen as he managed to prevail
Verstappen congratulates Norris following his victory in the Dutch Grand Prix
Sighs in the Briton’s camp. He has not finished the first lap in front on all four occasions he has started on pole, including on Sunday. Only once has he emerged from the first corner in front, and the exception is a pernickety one: the opening bend in Sochi is a kink, and he was behind at the second corner.
Confusion reigned on the airwaves soon after Verstappen had slipped in front here. Norris’s race engineer Will Joseph asked him: ‘Who are we racing? Do you think it’s just Max?’
What a question. What a time to ask it.
A nonplussed Norris replied, somewhat inarticulately: ‘I think we are racing whoever we think. The car ahead?’
It seemed obvious that they were in a tussle with Verstappen. McLaren’s pace was equally clear. Combined with Norris’s fine driving it had carried him to pole by more than three-tenths of a second on a lap that takes less than 70sec to ride round.
They had the firepower to take on Max – and who else did they want to mark? They had a world championship party to gatecrash. Beating Verstappen was the only game by the seaside.
With his upgraded McLaren, Norris need not have fretted. He was closing in on Verstappen to within DRS range. ‘The pace is good,’ Norris averred.
And so his chance arrived to plant his foot on the Verstappen neck at the beginning of lap 18 of 72. With slipstream and then DRS, he put himself on the tail of his prey. He then swept out to the right and swung through the first corner – Tarzan – on the inside of it banked slope.
Verstappen clung to him for a few minutes but he convinced nobody, including himself, that he could pass his pal. ‘I can’t go any faster,’ he complained. ‘The car doesn’t respond to my inputs.’
Within six laps of taking the lead Norris was four seconds clear. Three laps later, when Verstappen stopped, the margin stood at 6.3sec.
And when Norris came out from his own rebooting a lap later, he maintained an advantage of 5.8sec. He then moved into the distance, coming home more than 20 seconds clear.
It was hardly a race for the ages, but it pulled off the trick of relighting rest of the season.
It is never easy for a driver or team to go through their first taste of world championship pressure. You don’t know how anyone will react. The fight favours the battle-hardened, which in this case means Verstappen and Red Bull.
But momentum is slipping away from him and them. This was the fifth race in succession he has failed to win, dating back in Spain two months and two days ago. It is his longest barren spell for four years, and to think he won seven of the first 10 rounds.
As for Norris, he needed this fillip. He should have won often more since taking his maiden victory in Miami, 112 days before. Silly mistakes undermined his progress at crucial times. So even if he claimed he was ‘not desperate’ to win in Zandvoort, it was hard to believe he did not see it for what it was: a make-or-break weekend.
He had to do it without the assistance of team-mate Oscar Piastri. The Australian, half-a-second back in qualifying, was passed for third place at the start by Mercedes’ George Russell, and ended the blustery afternoon in fourth place, with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in the last of the podium places.
Russell finished seventh and Lewis Hamilton eight – not the best return for Mercedes.
As for their compatriot Norris, he signed off with the fastest lap. That won him an extra point. It might yet make the difference in the final analysis.
