Lando Norris says Max Verstappen’s recent victories should not surprise people and that Red Bull has areas where it is on “another level” compared to McLaren.
Verstappen won back-to-back races in Monza and Baku to double his tally for the season after not having secured a victory since Imola prior to that. McLaren, meanwhile, endured a tough weekend in Azerbaijan, and Norris said Red Bull having circuits that suit its car is not unexpected, even if he’s seen a further step forward in performance.
“It’s not often that they’re slow, so I think people need to stop being so surprised that they’re quick,” Norris said. “Max was winning races already at the beginning of the year, he could have won round one, I think he was pretty close to winning [other races]. The whole season they’ve been quick.
“The Red Bull has been good; they brought some upgrades to Monza which seems to have helped them improve even more. So, not a surprise, I think we know that they’re an incredibly strong team and one of the best drivers ever in Formula 1 so we expect nothing less.
“They’re going to make our life difficult for the rest of the season, but we also know from our side, we struggled a bit [in Baku]; Monza, clearly were not quick enough. We’ve made improvements, but things where the Red Bull have been so good and dominant in the past, they still have and we don’t, and when I was following the Red Bull [in Baku], there were clearly some areas where they were just another level to us and we need to understand why.”
Expanding on where the Red Bull has an advantage over the McLaren, Norris said it’s down to how tough his car is to drive when in a low-downforce configuration.
“I don’t think we had the pace of Red Bull, honestly,” he said. “That was very, very clear. I think just the lower downforce tracks, we still seem to struggle.
“We still don’t have the confidence we need. It can be quick, we’re just not able to repeat it as often as we need to and as often as the Red Bull, for example. We’ve had an amazing season, don’t get me wrong, but we clearly have things that are not good enough and we have to keep working on them.”