Lando Norris says McLaren’s strong driver pairing is his team’s main asset against its rivals in its fight in Formula 1’s Constructors’ Championship.
Red Bull continues to dominate proceedings with max Verstappen scoring in Canada last weekend his sixth victory in 2024.
However, despite the Dutchman’s results, Norris and McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri have outscored their Milton Keynes opponents in the last three races, in large part due to the subdued results registered by Sergio Perez who failed to finish in Monaco and in Montreal last weekend.
While Norris steered clear of suggesting that McLaren might outpace Red Bull in the championship thanks to its more consistent line-up, the Briton says the latter could prove a key advantage in its fight for the runner-up spot with Ferrari.
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“To be honest, at the minute, I think [it’s] between Ferrari and us, yeah, so we'll keep pushing and I think that's one of our biggest strengths at the minute.
“We have two drivers at McLaren who are up there not making mistakes and getting pretty much everything out of the car every single weekend.
“Yeah, it's rare, there's not many other teams on the grid that have such a thing. So for us, it's more out of what we can do against Ferrari.
“Again, we've been a more consistent team coming into this weekend. They've had some mistakes and just struggled a little bit more for whatever reason.
“But at the end of the day, I think two is going to be better than one, you know, in Max's case. So we're doing a good job, but we still need to keep pushing on and try and bring more upgrades and things like that.
“Because with Mercedes joining, it's only going to make it harder to score big points like we did today.”
Verstappen acknowledged Red Bull’s relative weakness caused by Perez’s absence from the leading contenders, which he says to produce an extra effort to “score big”.
But in the long run, the three-time world champion says that if he keeps winning, Red Bull will prevail in the teams’ standings.
“I think the damage was done yesterday, of course, for Checo,” Verstappen explained.
“You know, starting in the back, it's very hard in these conditions. Then, of course, I saw him retire with the damage. So I knew that I had to score big, of course, to not let the other teams catch up a lot.
“But I do think at the end of the day, as long as you keep winning, so you score 25 points, even if the others finish P2, P3, you don't really lose out too much. And then, you know, you kind of can afford sometimes these one-offs.
“But of course, naturally, we always want the two cars to be up there. And I also have no doubt that that will change very soon again.
“So, yeah, we just need to work on our car, to be honest, to make it a bit easier to drive also, probably, to feel a bit more comfortable.
“And then I'm sure that we have both cars back up there like we had in the beginning of the season.”
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