Lando Norris, P1
“I’m very happy to be back and parking the car in front of the #1 board again. The car was beautiful to drive and I felt very confident. My pace today was probably some of the best pace I’ve ever had. The team has put in a huge amount of work to get us into a position to win again. I’m very proud of everyone, and it’s nice to do my bit and be able to reward that effort with a victory.
“This is probably the circuit that suits me, and suits the MCL40 best, but I want to believe we can continue this form after the summer break. There will be places where we struggle more, but I certainly believe we can win further races. We’re going to be bringing even more to the car – but then so are our competition, so it’s going to be tough.
“I’m proud of the whole team, Pole, fastest in FP3, and a strong win is the result of a lot of hard work. We’ll enjoy the summer break, come back to Zandvoort refreshed, and keep pushing for more wins.”
Oscar Piastri, DNF
“A tough day to end a tricky weekend. I was really pleased with my start and Lap 1 performance, putting ourselves in a position to win at a circuit where track position is key. When we swapped to the Hard tyre, we just struggled for pace and then lost valuable time when I was hit by a lapped car. From there we continued to struggle until the gearbox failure ultimately ended our race.
“Congratulations to Lando on the win, it is a good moment for the team, and we can take positives that the car is now in a position to win races. We will keep pushing to find more and more performance into the second half of the season. Now, we take a break.”
Andrea Stella, Team Principal
“Today's result is a fantastic reward for the entire team, both at the track and back at the factory. We race as a team and today was a well-executed race from a strategic and sporting principles point of view, which wouldn't be possible without two drivers who fully support our approach. The competition between Lando and Oscar was great, fair racing, and we're very pleased with the respectful approach they showed each other.
"Lando's pace was simply mega, and he put himself in a position to take a victory that was won on pure speed. Oscar deserved his opportunity to fight for the win after taking the lead, and his race was unfortunately compromised by the incident with a backmarker, and then the gearbox failure. We clearly still have work to do on the reliability side, which took us out of contention for at least a double podium.
“The performance step we saw this weekend can be entirely ascribed to the upgrades, which validate the conceptual direction we have taken. It was a monumental effort from our aerodynamics, design, manufacturing and logistics departments to deliver these parts, and I want to extend my thanks to them and our partners at HPP for helping us squeeze every millisecond out of the car.
"While we are pleased with our performance today, back in a position to win the race, we know it's going to be a race of development until the end of the season. This result proves what we are capable of, and we will keep our focus on delivering more performance to fight for victories consistently. We go back to work for one last push before the summer break next week, where we will continue to work on reliability and future upgrades, ahead of a well-deserved rest for the entire team. As we start the second half of the season, we want to be in condition to show the same level of performance we ended the first half of the season with.”
