Christian Horner puts Lando Norris under spotlight for ‘remarkable’ lack of F1 wins
Lando Norris overhauled Max Verstappen on track to take a dominant Dutch Grand Prix victory.
Claiming the Dutch GP victory by the biggest winning margin of the season so far, Christian Horner says it is “remarkable” Lando Norris has “only” won two races.
After two years of Red Bull dominance, including an unprecedented 21 wins in 22 races in 2023, McLaren have not only caught the Milton Keynes squad on the track, they’ve pulled ahead.
Christian Horner: ‘Remarkable that that’s only Lando’s second win in that car’
Additional reporting by Sam Cooper
The MCL38 has replaced the RB20 as the car to beat with McLaren stringing together a run of 11 podiums. However, only three came from race victories, two going the way of Norris in Miami and in Zandvoort while Oscar Piastri made his mark in Hungary.
It’s meant that even though McLaren now have the fastest car, Norris trails Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship by 70 points with Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko often claiming it is Verstappen who is making up the difference behind the wheel.
The Red Bull driver has secured seven wins this season, although he hasn’t been on the top step of the podium since June’s Spanish Grand Prix which is his longest winless run since 2020.
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Horner says Red Bull were fortunate to make early season gains in both championships as it is “remarkable” that Norris has only secured two wins in 15 races.
“In the Drivers’ we’re lucky that they underperformed in the early part of the year, so we’ve got a 70-point buffer, but that could diminish pretty quickly,” he told the media including PlanetF1.com.
“I mean, you know, it’s remarkable that that’s only Lando’s second win in that car.
“But, he’s driving well, he’s finding confidence, and you know the pressure is on us to respond.
“We’re used to being in championship fights over the years, and you know we’ll dig deep, and we’re going to fight with everything we’ve got over the remaining nine races.”
Norris won Sunday’s Dutch Grand Prix by 22.896s ahead of Verstappen with the reigning World Champion admitting he backed off in the final stint as he knew it was “completely over”.
In sharp contrast to previous races and his radio messages to Red Bull, on Sunday Verstappen was very calm in his communication with the team.
Horner says that’s because he accepted that Norris had the quicker car on the day so he did what was needed to maximise his own result.
“He accepted he knew that Lando just had a quicker car, and actually saw that from Friday,” he said.
“So I think he drove a very mature race where he wanted to ensure that okay, he was conceding seven points to Lando, but he didn’t want to concede more than that, so he just made sure that he delivered the result that he needed.”
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