Lando Norris has conceded that McLaren has possessed “on average the best car” across the 2024 Formula 1 season amid his dominant win at the Dutch Grand Prix.
Norris crushed the opposition at Zandvoort last weekend as he surged to pole position and then registered a crushing 22-second win over Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
But although McLaren has slashed Red Bull’s Constructors’ Championship advantage to 30 points, Norris still remains a considerable 70 points behind the Dutchman.
McLaren has retained the fastest car since updates in Miami inspired Norris to his maiden F1 win, but the Briton had rued wasting several chances to add to his total.
Both Norris and McLaren boss Andrea Stella have been reticent on several occasions about the narrative that the team has boasted the quickest package on the grid.
However, having produced a supreme showing in the upgraded MCL38, Norris has now admitted that the Woking-based squad has had the edge over the competition.
Asked whether he can state McLaren now has the best car in F1, Norris told Motorsport Week: “100%, yeah. Today, this whole weekend, I think we’ve had the best car.
“I think we’ve, on average, had the best car, for sure. We’ve not had a dominant car at any point this season, I would say.
“Even if you go back to Hungary [where McLaren claimed a 1-2], as much as people hate me to say it, Max was still very quick in Hungary.
“He just didn’t have a great race, but his pace was still very, very strong.
“We know more information than people do on the outside, so we can comment in much more factual ways than people can who are just watching on TV and taking their picks and guesses.”
Norris has acknowledged that McLaren should have more than three victories this term, but believes his Zandvoort success shows that it’s learning from its mistakes.
“We’ve had, on average, the best car,” he repeated. “We probably should have won two, three more races as a team, but we didn’t.
“You know, we should have won and we didn’t, and it’s because we’ve not done a good enough job. I didn’t do a good enough job.
“And we worked hard over the summer break to just try and take a step back and reset and go again.
“We’ve had a great car. This was our first time we bought some good upgrades to the car since Miami. They worked very well then. They’ve worked once again now.
“Yeah, it’s still a long way to go. So we still have to keep working hard because this is just Zandvoort.
“Monza is a completely different circuit. So we’ll keep our heads down and keep chipping away.”
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