The alarm bells are sounding at Red Bull Racing after the team’s crushing defeat of Max Verstappen at the hands of McLaren’s Lando Norris, but the Dutchman insists there’s no need to panic.
From pole position, Norris was beaten to Zandvoort’s first corner by Verstappen, but after settling into a groove in the opening phase of the race, the Briton reeled in and cleanly overtook F1’s championship leader, much to the chagrin of the latter’s ‘orange army’.
At the checkered flag, Verstappen was severely sanctioned by his McLaren rival who concluded his day with almost a 23-second margin, the greatest winning gap enjoyed by a driver this season.
“I think this weekend was just a bad weekend in general, so we need to understand that,” commented Verstappen when all was said and done.
“The last few races already, they haven’t really been fantastic. So that, I think in a sense, was already a bit alarming.
“But we know that we don’t need to panic. We are just trying to improve the situation. And that’s what we are working on. But F1 is very complicated.”
Verstappen still leads Norris in the Drivers’ standings by 70 points with nine rounds to go, but Red Bull’s advantage over McLaren in the Constructors’ championship has fallen to just 30 points.
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Christian Horner echoed his driver’s call to stay calm and keep working but the Red Bull team boss was anything but dismissive of McLaren’s strength.
"Based on [the] performance, if it was like that at the next nine races, yes, it would be very, very difficult,” Horner said.
“But it's the fourth time this year, only the fourth time, that Max's points lead had reduced. It's only Lando's second win.
"We know we have to find performance. So we were 78 points, now we're 70 ahead. We want to make sure that we extend the lead, not see it continuously diminish.
"Obviously they made a step a little while ago and their car here particularly with Lando was very impressive. So, we need to understand where and address our deficit."
Horner reckoned that McLaren’s current momentum is just another indication of how the competitive landscape in Formula 1 can shift so rapidly.
“It just shows that things have moved very quickly,” he added. “I mean, we were winning races by 20, 25 seconds and Stefano [Domenicali, F1 CEO] was asking us to slow down in the first five races.
"It can change very quickly and that means it can change back the other way as well.
"We know we've got an issue. You can hear that Max didn't feel that the car was responding to what he wanted. We've obviously got to be able to manifest that into a setup that works these tyres across all conditions.
"McLaren did that with Lando. We weren't able to, but we limited the damage by 'if you can't win it, finish second'."
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