Norris tips cap to Verstappen’s greatness — while backing McLaren’s machine to finish the job
Lando Norris has no interest in belittling the man he’s trying to depose. As McLaren surge toward what looks increasingly like a title double in 2025, Norris called Max Verstappen “one of the best drivers ever in Formula 1” — and then calmly explained why it might not matter.
“We have a team that’s a lot more stable and performing a lot better than Red Bull is,” Norris said ahead of Zandvoort. “We have a better car. We have a better team. So I have my confidence in them that we can stay ahead.”
It’s a blunt assessment, and it’s hard to argue with the recent body of work. McLaren arrive in the Netherlands on a run of four straight one-two finishes, a streak that’s put Oscar Piastri top of the standings with Norris just nine points back. Verstappen, who held off Norris to win a fourth title in 2024, starts his home race 97 points adrift of Piastri.
The scale of the swing is startling given how this ruleset began. Red Bull owned the early ground-effect era; 2023 was the statistical battering ram, with 21 wins from 22 grands prix and 19 of those for Verstappen. He completed the four-peat last season despite McLaren’s creep into the frame. This year, that creep turned into a pass — and kept going.
Inside McLaren, there’s little appetite for popping champagne early. Team principal Andrea Stella is working hard to keep both feet planted, and one eye on the number 1 car.
“I wouldn’t exclude Max, for instance, being in the game,” Stella cautioned. “We remain concentrated, but we want to put our drivers in a position to sustain their quest until the end of the season.”
That “quest” is now a two-car puzzle. Norris has three wins from the last four and has trimmed Piastri’s cushion into single digits, the kind of internal squeeze that can turn Sunday afternoons into chess matches. It’s also the sort of pressure Red Bull used to apply from the front — relentlessly, methodically — when the outcome felt inevitable.
This is where Norris’ “stability” line really bites. McLaren have been razor-sharp operationally: stops are clean, strategies conservative when they need to be and opportunistic when they can be. The car has range. And critically, the garage looks calm. Red Bull, by contrast, don’t look like the metronome of 2023. The outright pace hasn’t vanished, but the margins are gone. When your rival’s floor is your ceiling, consistency becomes a liability rather than a weapon.
None of which means Zandvoort is a parade. Verstappen has won three of the four Dutch Grands Prix since the race returned, and his home form has usually been a force of nature. The grandstands glow orange for a reason. Give Verstappen a sniff of clean air and he will still control a grand prix as few drivers can. But the equation is brutal now: with McLaren executing and both drivers harvesting heavy points, the reigning champion needs more than a home-crowd bounce. He needs McLaren to blink.
Norris doesn’t expect it. He’s not sugar-coating the scale of Verstappen’s talent — he’s boxing it off. “Max is still quite easily one of the best drivers ever in Formula 1,” he said. Then came the bit that matters in 2025: McLaren, he believes, have the better package.
If that remains true over the next phase, this championship likely becomes an intra-team arm wrestle decided by qualifying margins and out-laps. And if it doesn’t? Well, Stella’s not wrong to keep Verstappen in the frame. You don’t bury a four-time champion with half a season left just because the arithmetic looks friendly.
Zandvoort, then: orange smoke, unforgiving camber, and a McLaren team that looks like it’s built a fortress around two drivers who can both win on any given Sunday. Verstappen’s legend isn’t in question. McLaren’s momentum is. That’s where titles are won.
