Lando Norris has stated that he remained “calm” when he lost the lead to Max Verstappen at the start as he cruised to a crushing win in Formula 1’s Dutch Grand Prix.
Norris’ dismal streak t not retaining his pole position advantage on the opening lap extended at Zandvoort as he made a sluggish launch and Verstappen leapt ahead.
However, the Briton managed to recompose and stormed past Verstappen down the start-finish straight on Lap 18 and accelerated clear to win with a 22 second-gap.
Norris, who had tempered expectations heading into the race despite his seismic pole position margin, has expressed that McLaren’s pace surpassed his imagination.
“I mean, a win’s always satisfying, so… very good,” Norris, who landed his second career win, told media including Motorsport Week.
“It obviously didn’t start in the most optimistic way, but the pace was unbelievable from the beginning, and I could go with Max quite happily at the start.
“I just didn’t expect our pace to be probably as good as what it was today, which is a good thing.
“It’s nice to be kind of a little bit surprised by this, and as soon as I got ahead, it was quite straightforward.
“I could push, I had good confidence to push the whole race, save the tyres a little bit, but just get in good rhythm and go from there.
“The car felt amazing, the car felt great, and it made my life easier for sure, so big thanks to the team.”
Norris denied he was certain he would be able to regain the lead, despite admitting that indications from earlier in the weekend suggested McLaren’s pace was strong.
“I mean, after yesterday, of course, we were confident the pace was going to be good for sure,” he proclaimed.
“Our long-run pace on Friday was very good, but we didn’t do anything more than 10 or 11 laps, and you never know in the 72-lap race what’s going to happen.
“I would say also that Max’s pace didn’t look bad on Friday.
“You could already pick apart a bit of it and give yourself some confidence, but it wasn’t like I came into here thinking, ‘we can easily pass him on track and pull the gap that we did today.’
“It’s just not often that I’ve been in the lead and been able to control things and do what I want to do and look after the tyres and have clean air and stuff like that.
“All of this makes a big difference in the end of the day.
“I didn’t expect things to go as well as they did, but after getting down into Turn 1 and off the line, I was actually surprisingly calm.
“Maybe because I’m a bit used to going backwards at the start. I’m very prepared for those kind of scenarios. I was very calm and just, ‘OK, what can I do now?’
“That was just to look ahead and start saving tyres and see what I had pace-wise.
“But really even like [Turns] 10, 11, 12, 13, I kind of managed to catch Max a little bit again and started to gain quite a bit of optimism that actually I could almost pass him on track.
“So I had two opportunities. The first one I wasn’t quite close enough. The next lap I did end in. I could get my head down from there.”
Norris’ dominant winning margin constitutes the largest to date this season and comes as McLaren introduced a substantial upgrade package to this weekend’s race.
However, the now two-time F1 race winner has insisted that the Woking-based squad would have been victorious even without the latest improvements to the MCL38.
Asked how much the new parts improved McLaren’s competitiveness, Norris replied: “This weekend, a little bit.
“I still feel like we probably would have won without the upgrades this weekend.
“The upgrades didn’t make us a lot quicker here, but the upgrades we’ve been putting on the car, they’ve helped us every time.”
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