Lando Norris makes significant McLaren MCL38 declaration that will alert Red Bull rivals

Lando Norris believes McLaren’s MCL38 is now F1’s fastest car, having dominated the Dutch Grand Prix ahead of Max Verstappen.

Having taken pole position in emphatic fashion at Zandvoort, Norris being beaten off the line proved merely an inconvenience for the British driver as Norris caught back up and overtook Verstappen before romping to a lead of over 20 seconds by the chequered flag.

Lando Norris: McLaren, on average, has been the best F1 car

Having produced the type of dominant showing that Verstappen and Red Bull have produced more often than not over the past two years, Norris didn’t attempt to downplay the potency of his McLaren as he spoke to media, including PlanetF1.com , after his second-ever F1 career win.

Asked whether the McLaren MCL38 is now the best package on the grid, Norris smiled: “Oh, 100 percent yeah.”

“The whole weekend, I think we’ve had the best car. We’ve had, on average, 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, as much as people hate me saying it –  Max was still very quick in Hungary, he just didn’t have a great race, but his pace was still very strong.

“Obviously, 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.

“We’ve had, on average, the best car. We probably should have won two, three more races as a team, but we didn’t, and we’re not saying anything more than that – we should have won and we didn’t, and it’s because we’ve not done a good enough job and I didn’t do a good enough job.”

With McLaren and Norris coming into the second half of the season with a steep uphill battle to claw back in the leads of Red Bull and Verstappen in the championships, Norris said the upgrades brought to Zandvoort show there is no relenting on the part of the Woking-based squad.

“We’ve worked hard over the summer break to just try and take a step back and reset and go again,” he said.

“So yes, we’ve had a great car. This was the first time we brought some good upgrades to the car since Miami.

“They worked very well then and they’ve worked once again now. 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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The MCL38 had revised front and rear suspensions, circuit-specific rear and beam wings, a revised floor, and a new front brake scoop as its upgrade package – by far and away the most significant of the updates any of the front-running teams brought to Zandvoort.

But, even had the team shown up with the same parts available to it at Spa-Francorchamps, Norris believes victory would still have been on the cards.

“I still feel like we probably would have won without the upgrades this weekend,” he said.

“The upgrades didn’t make us certainly a lot quicker here but the upgrades we’ve been putting on the car, they’ve helped us every time.

“We put it on and it just did everything it wanted to do and needed to do, and was meant to do. We’ve had little bits along the way, but just like tweaks, it’s nothing that’s like ‘Here’s performance.’

“A lot of other people have, you know so we kind of fell down, a little bit, the order in terms of delivering parts and delivering upgrades, comparing to all of our competition, and this was the first time we really put something on the car to drive us a step forward, and it definitely did that.

“But it’s like we’re not been competitive over the last two months. Since Miami, we’ve been quickest in Budapest and very quick at certain other races like Barcelona and Silverstone and stuff like that. But small things make a big difference.

“Today, with how the car felt, I’m sure it was a step ahead. A new rear wing probably helped me get past Max today. So little things like that definitely help you go forward.”

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