Dutch Grand Prix: Post Race press conference

Today’s post-race press conference with Lando Norris, Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc.

Track Interviews – Conducted by Giedo van der Garde

Max Verstappen, P2, I think it’s not really the result you hoped for?

Max Verstappen: Well, you always try to do better. I mean, we had a good start, so we tried everything we could today, but throughout the race, I think it was quite clear that we were not quick enough, so I tried to be second today.

Well, the start looked really, really nice. I mean, everybody was cheering you on. All the circuit went completely crazy on the grandstands. Did you dream a lot last night about the start, how you would manage into Turn 1?

MV:To be honest, not at all. I know that we have good starts, so I was quite confident that 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.

Anyway, good result, I think. Not that you hoped for. Maybe some words in Dutch as well.

MV:Yes, of course. I’d rather win today, but I can’t win all of them. I’m always very happy with P2. I hope everyone enjoyed it. See you next year.

Charles, wow, what a race, starting P6, finishing third on the podium. Unbelievable result for you and the whole team.

Charles Leclerc: Yeah, very, very surprised. I’m not very often happy with a P3, but I think with today’s race, we can be extremely happy with the job we’ve done on a difficult weekend for the team. We’ve been struggling from Friday until the race. In the race, we found some more pace, executed a perfect strategy, we undercut two of our competitors there, and then we managed to keep them behind. So a really strong race for the team, and yeah, really happy to start the second half like this.

Congratulations. Well done for you and the whole team. And good luck next week at the Ferrari’s home track.

Lando Norris, you are a Heineken Dutch Grand Prix winner. How does that feel?

Lando Norris: Thanks. It feels amazing, yeah, once again. I wouldn’t say a perfect race, because of lap one again, but afterwards it was beautiful. You know, the pace was very strong. The car was unbelievable today, so I could get comfortable, I could push and get past Max, which was the main thing, and just go from there. So, honestly, quite a straightforward race, still tough, but very enjoyable.

Did the orange army help you a little bit?

LN: Yeah, I mean, we have so many fans here, so it’s beautiful. I mean, I have a lot of Dutch fans and Dutch supporters, so I thank you very much. I mean, I’m sure some are a little upset, but I hope it was a good race, and yeah, a lot of them supporting me, so I appreciate it a lot.

By lap 18, when you passed Max, did you know that already that you would win that race?

LN: Yeah, I mean, I think from quite early on, actually, from probably lap five, six, seven, I expected Max to start pushing and get a bit of a gap, and he never did. So from that point, I knew we were in with a good fight. But he seemed to just keep dropping off, and my pace was getting better. So it’s a nice feeling inside the car, and especially when I got past, you know, I could just get comfortable, I could push, I had clean air, and that’s always a big help.

Press Conference

Many congratulations, Lando. What a drive. How satisfying was that performance today?

LN: A win is always satisfying, so very good. Obviously, didn’t start in the most optimistic way, but the pace was unbelievable from the beginning and I could go with Max quite happily at the start. I just didn’t expect our pace to be probably as good as what it was today, which is a good thing. It’s nice to be kind of a little bit surprised by this. And as soon as I got ahead, it was quite straightforward. I could push. I had good confidence to push the whole race, save the tyres a little bit, but just get in a good rhythm and go from there. So the car felt amazing. The car felt great and made my life easier for sure. So a big thanks to the team.

Zandvoort hasn’t been the happiest of hunting grounds for McLaren in recent seasons. Just how much have these upgrades lifted the performance?

LN: I mean, this weekend a little bit. I still feel like we probably would have won without the upgrades this weekend. The upgrades didn’t make us certainly a lot quicker here, you know, but the upgrades we’ve been putting on the car, they’ve helped us every time. It’s not like we put it on and questioned it. We put it on and it was just… It did everything it wanted to do and needed to do and it wasn’t meant to do. We’ve taken our time, and this was our first upgrade since Miami. Yes, we’ve had little bits along the way, but just like tweaks, it’s nothing that’s like his performance. And a lot of other people have. So we kind of fell down a little bit the order in terms of delivering parts and delivering upgrades, compared to all of our competition. And this was our first time we really put something on the car to drive us a step forward. And it definitely did that. But it’s not like we’ve not been competitive over the last two months since Miami. You know, we’ve been quickest in Budapest. very quick at certain other races like Barcelona and Silverstone and stuff like that. But small things make a big difference. And today, with how the car felt, I’m sure it was a step ahead. You know, a new rear wing probably helped me get past Max today. So little things like that definitely help you go forwards.

After the start, when Max got the jump on you, were you still very confident that you could win this race?

LN: No, I mean, after yesterday, of course, we were confident the pace was going to be good, for sure. My long-run pace on Friday was very good, but you don’t do anything more than, like, 10, 11 laps, and you never know in the 72-lap race what’s going to happen. But I would say also Max’s pace didn’t look bad on Friday. You could already pick apart a bit of it and kind of give yourself some confidence, It wasn’t like we came into here thinking, ‘yeah, we can easily just pass him on track’ and pull the gap that we did today. It’s just not often that I’ve been in the lead and being able to control things and do what I want to do and look after the tyres and have clean air and stuff like that. And all of this makes a big difference in the end of the day. So I didn’t expect things to go as well as it did. After getting done into Turn 1 and off the line, I was actually just surprisingly calm, maybe because I’m a bit used to going backwards at the start. I’m very prepared for those kind of scenarios. And I was very calm and just, ‘OK, well, what can I do now?’ And that was just to look ahead, start saving tyres, see what I had pace wise. But really even like lap 10, 11, 12, 13, I kind of managed to catch Max a little bit again and started to gain quite a bit of optimism that actually I could almost pass him on track. So I had two opportunities. The first one, I wasn’t quite close enough. The next lap I did it and I could get my head down from there.

Oscar had a similar problem at the start to you. What can you and the team do to improve the situation going forward?

LN: Not get wheelspin.

You make it sound quite an easy solution, but how do you do that?

LN: Obviously not, because otherwise I would have done better then. But I mean, we know what to do. We know what’s required to do a perfect start. But we’re talking about fine margins here. Because we both didn’t get it right, it seems like maybe there was more underlying issue or something wasn’t how it was supposed to be, or we’ve clearly misjudged something more than what others did. But Oscar’s one of the best starters on the grid. I’m not as good as him, but there or thereabouts. I’m not a bad starter, but not as good as obviously what we need to be. Again, it was a race which almost slipped away off the line, but today was, again, different to every other thing that’s happened. So, kind of like I said before the weekend, we need to find a bit more consistency, but we’ve worked on it and I feel like I’ve done better procedurally, but obviously didn’t turn into the correct thing.

So, Lando, phenomenal pace here. What does this mean going forward? Let’s talk about Monza next weekend. Do you think you’ll be as competitive there?

LN: I have no idea. You ask us questions like we’re meant to know. I’ve got no idea. Yeah, anyone could be on top. Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull, us. Ferrari were quite quick today. We probably didn’t expect them to be as good as they were. Maybe Red Bull struggled a bit more. I think that was probably more the factor that the Red Bull struggled a bit more today than we were expecting. We just keep our heads down. There’s no point thinking how we’re going to do next weekend. We’ll just get there and work hard and wait till we get there. There’s no point thinking ahead.

Check out our Sunday gallery from Zandvoort here.