For the first time since its return to the F1 calendar in 2021, Max Verstappen lost his home race in Zandvoort to Lando Norris. However, it’s not just Verstappen’s loss that worries Red Bull — it’s the margin by which Norris won that has sounded alarms at Milton Keynes.
Despite having lost the lead of the race to Verstappen at turn 1 on the first lap, the #4 driver overtook him on lap 18 with relative ease. After that, Norris built a massive gap of 22.8 seconds — which was the biggest margin of victory this season so far in his newly upgraded MCL38.
F1 expert Edd Straw explained the Norris factor among others that gave McLaren such a big advantage in The Race’s analysis video of Red Bull’s crushing defeat at Zandvoort.
“As always multiple factors fed in into its pace advantage in qualifying particularly. Tire preparation was essential, and as [Andrea] Stella argued [Lando] Norris’ advantage of just over three and a half tenths in qualifying was far beyond the performance gain of the upgrades,” Straw said.
Simply unstoppable #F1 #DutchGP @LandoNorris pic.twitter.com/WwB1nY8R1f
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 25, 2024
Straw also quoted Andrea Stella mentioning that “The Lando Norris factor was significant“ in Zandvoort. However, he also stressed the fact that the upgrades did work quite well on the McLaren and gave the car a more robust aerodynamic platform. The MCL38 was not affected as much by the changing wind conditions compared to Red Bull.
Some of the upgrades on the McLaren car included a new brake scoop, a revised front suspension geometry, a new floor edge, a new rear wing, and a new beam wing.
What should be even more worrying for Red Bull is that the Woking outfit will keep upgrading the MCL38. McLaren CEO, Zak Brown said after the race that they have more upgrades coming on the car in Monza, with more in the pipeline for later races.
Red Bull is not confident of extracting more out of the RB20
While on the one hand, McLaren keeps upgrading their car, Red Bull has gone the opposite route and rolled back a few upgrades to go back to a previous spec. For example, while Sergio Perez was running the recently updated RB20, Verstappen had rolled back to the Bahrain-spec floor body.
It’s pretty clear that Red Bull is still trying to figure out where they went wrong with updating the RB20 but the team remains clueless as of now which was evident by Verstappen’s complaints about the car’s balance.
Red Bull’s technical director, Pierre Wache even admitted in the week leading up to the Dutch Grand Prix that Red Bull might have hit a ceiling when asked by Autosport. “[Hitting] our ceiling maybe, but it doesn’t mean that it is the overall ceiling [of the regulations]”, Wache remarked hoping that the 2025 car will not have the current fundamental issues.
But if Red Bull fails to give Verstappen a car he feels at home with for the rest of the 2024 season, they might also lose the drivers’ championship along with the constructors’ championship.
