Revealed: Lando Norris ‘monster lap’ data vs Max Verstappen in Dutch GP pole battle

Lando Norris took his fourth Formula 1 career pole position at the Dutch Grand Prix, putting in a fantastic lap to beat Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri at Zandvoort.

Lando Norris was unchallenged in Q3 of the Dutch Grand Prix. The British driver completed a ‘monster lap’, as Zak Brown described it, to beat his closest rivals and be Sunday’s favourite for victory at Max Verstappen’s home track – going fastest by 0.356s in the process.

Lando Norris ‘monster lap’ data revealed in Max Verstappen pole battle

McLaren’s updates to the MCL38 seem to have paid off once again. Lando Norris dominated in Sector 1, maintaining decent straight-line speed without compromising the cornering speed through the tricky Tarzan corner at the first braking point and Turn 3, the first of the two banked corners of this track.

Max Verstappen was the fastest driver in Sector 2 thanks to the RB20’s good performance in high-speed corners such as Turns 6-7 and Max’s handling of the windy conditions in Turns 8-9.

In the final sector, Lando Norris was once again the fastest with a great traction through the last banked corner of Zandvoort, which also allowed him to have more acceleration to approach the finish straight at the end of his flying lap in his last Q3 run.

At both Red Bull and McLaren, the teams seem to have opted for different set-ups ahead of tomorrow’s race on their two cars. Oscar Piastri and Sergio Perez with a higher top speed and lower downforce set-up.

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In contrast, Max Verstappen and Lando Norris have opted for a higher aero load set-up.

If we make a direct comparison between the telemetry of Lando Norris’ and Max Verstappen’s laps, we can see slight differences and an interesting curiosity: the MCL38 and the RB20 had a very similar behaviour in low-speed corners through both Lando and Max’s laps.

Normally, McLaren has had a superior performance in this aspect in the last races, but the unpredictability of the wind has equalised the performances in this aspect. And indeed, Max Verstappen had a better Sector 2 than Lando Norris.

However, Lando’s cornering at the final corner of the Zandvoort circuit and the acceleration before the finish line was unparalleled. The icing on the cake to an amazing lap for the papaya team driver.

Compared to Oscar Piastri, we can see that the speed difference between the two is minimal. However, Lando has performed slightly better at almost every point of the circuit to earn almost five tenths of a second of delta at the end of the lap. The gap between the two was clearly ‘in crescendo’ as the metres went by.

McLaren has come back even stronger from the summer break. Lando Norris’ pole and Oscar Piastri’s P3 can make the team dream of a win at Max Verstappen’s home.

The long run data was also very promising, but they will have to make the numbers shown by the computers count on track.

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