What Max Verstappen said about Lando Norris’ race start in Dutch GP cooldown room

Max Verstappen picked up on Lando Norris’ “wheelspin” as they discussed a fresh tricky start for the McLaren driver at the Dutch Grand Prix.

Race starts have been highlighted as an area needing improvement for Norris in F1 2024, with his launch off the line at the Dutch Grand Prix also far from ideal as he dropped behind Verstappen.

Max Verstappen brings up Lando Norris Dutch GP ‘wheelspin’

Norris undid the damage and in dramatic fashion, re-passing Verstappen into Turn 1 on Lap 18 and never looking back from there as he went on to win the Dutch Grand Prix by a margin of almost 23 seconds.

That marked the first non-Max Verstappen victory at Zandvoort since the track returned to the calendar back in 2021.

And as the drivers headed for the cooldown room, Verstappen would start a conversation with Norris about the race start, claiming grip was low.

“Bit of wheelspin?” Verstappen asked Norris, to which he replied: “Straight away!”

Verstappen added: “But it was very low grip in general I found it at the start.”

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After passing Verstappen, Norris was able to stretch the gap out to five seconds, but it was on the second and final stint after swapping medium tyres for hards where Norris put major distance between himself and Verstappen, creating that final victory margin of 22.896s.

“You were not quick? Mercedes?” Norris asked Verstappen, with George Russell the highest-finishing Mercedes in P7, while Lewis Hamilton recovered to P8.

“Not on the hard,” Verstappen replied. “On the mediums it was okay, but the hards…”

Before Norris’ arrival, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who completed the podium, asked a question which Verstappen would likely not have enjoyed answering, as he queried “how far were you?” from Norris in the end.

“20 seconds or something, 22 seconds,” he confirmed.

Speaking immediately after the race, Verstappen admitted that Red Bull were simply “not quick enough” today, meaning he had to switch focus to settling for P2.

Put to him that it was not the result he hoped for, Verstappen replied: “Well, we always try to do better.

“We had a good start, so we tried everything we could today, but throughout the race I think it was quite clear that we’re not quick enough, so I tried to be second today.

“I know that we have good starts so I was quite confident we would have another one. And luckily, it was like that.

“And then, yeah, I just tried to do my own race, and that was my race, and I was second today.”

Norris also claimed the fastest lap for a perfect 26-point haul, reducing Verstappen’s Drivers’ Championship lead to 70 points.

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