"Nowhere near good enough" – McLaren puzzled by Dutch GP sprint struggles

Reigning world champion Lando Norris says McLaren’s low-speed weaknesses meant it was “nowhere near good enough” to challenge for victory in Zandvoort’s sprint race.

McLaren arrived at the beach-side circuit with its latest upgrade package focusing on the rear of the car, including a new rear wing assembly, to build on the progress made by its race-winning Hungary upgrades.

The first indications pointed towards the upgrade working as expected, with McLaren firmly in the hunt for sprint pole on Friday as George Russell defeated both second-placed Norris and fourth-fastest Oscar Piastri by less than a tenth.

But instead of hunting down Russell in Saturday’s race, Norris was quickly put on the defensive by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who was the only frontrunner to start on soft tyres rather than mediums. Intriguingly, Leclerc didn’t fade on his softer tyres towards the end of the 24-lap contest, but actually increased the pressure until he could reel off an overtake on Norris at the start of lap 18.

McLaren’s inferior rear tyre management against a competitor on more brittle tyres is a red flag which the Woking squad is trying to get on top of ahead of Saturday afternoon qualifying, with teams afforded one more chance to overhaul their car set-ups.

“We have to admit that our performance so far seems to be better over a single lap than in continuous laps,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella told Sky. “We were losing performance because of rear tyre degradation, some low-speed performance to improve.

“We need to look as to why we have so much rear tyre degradation, which rather than compound might have to do with car set-up and overall driving style, so certainly a few variables that we need to look into and optimise for the rest of the weekend.”

Norris sounded frustrated by his MCL40’s low-speed deficit which left him unable to match Russell and Leclerc. “I just don’t have the pace in general, especially the slow-speed corners,” he shrugged. “We struggled so much compared to the others. We saw that the whole weekend so far.

“There’s nothing we can do. The car is very good in high speed and it’s just nowhere near good enough for slow speed, so to be able to keep up was very difficult. We can’t over-push in high speed during the race and therefore we can’t optimise our strengths.”

He added: “I think we knew in Budapest we were very good in high-speed corners and we were pretty terrible in slow speed, but we still managed to win. Here there’s a lot more of the very, very slow speed. So no, I’m not surprised at all. It’s exactly what we expected.”

Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images

McLaren’s rear tyre degradation and its low-speed performance are very likely linked, Stella says, but he did point out its deficit is more dramatic than first thought.

“We didn’t expect it entirely,” he acknowledged. “We saw that in qualifying in the overlays the car is now performing very well in high speed, but definitely low speed is still an area of opportunity. So, I think today over multiple laps this low-speed deficit meant that we were degrading the tyres and exposed us to being overtaken by other cars.”

In the other McLaren, Piastri, who was passed at the start by Kimi Antonelli and followed the Italian home in fifth place, was also more surprised than Norris by his car’s lack of competitiveness on Saturday.

“We didn’t look great, especially in the second half of that sprint, so it’s a little bit surprising,” the Australian said.

“Yesterday, we thought with some slightly better laps for both of us we could have been on the front row, so it’s a little bit surprising to not have the pace today. But hopefully we can qualify well and then hang on a bit better tomorrow.”

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– The Motorsport.com Team