F1 News
McLaren confident in recovering in Zandvoort: 'Knew the pace sorts it out'
Lando Norris and McLaren have won the Dutch Grand Prix in a dominant fashion. The Briton's gap ahead of Max Verstappen was nearly 23 seconds in Zandvoort, even as another poor start set back both Norris and Oscar Piastri. According to team principal Andrea Stella, the team were confident in chasing Verstappen down.
Both McLarens had rocky starts in Zandvoort. Norris also lost the lead to Verstappen off the line, and was in P2 during the opening phase of the Grand Prix. Norris caught up to his rival on Lap 17, and then a lap later, he managed to overtake the three-time world champion on the main straight.
"I think it became apparent [that we don't need to undercut], I don't know exactly at which stage. It must have been around a few laps before the overtaking, where Max's pace started to drop off compared to Lando. And looking at Lando's data, he still seemed to be pretty comfortable. Like he could be fast without having to abuse car balance or abuse the tyres," team principal Andrea Stella began to explain why he was confident in that his driver will overtake the Red Bull.
He added: "So there it became apparent that with this kind of pace, we could have overtaken, even because Max was on a Monaco rear wing, and we were on a relatively small rear wing."
'Situation will sort itself out'
Therefore, according to Stella, there was no need to change their strategy. "So we knew that if we got into potentially what was half a second or something, we could have gained massively down the straight. I don't want to quote it. But at some stage, it became apparent, like let's not think about undercutting, because I think this situation will sort itself naturally with an overtaking."
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