Karun Chandhok: McLaren’s pace puts Norris back in the F1 title fight

The Dutch Grand Prix was an exciting way to kick off the second half of the season after the summer break. Following on from Lando Norris’s dominant victory in Budapest we wondered whether there would be some sort of a reset in the pecking order with the four-week gap between the two races. It became pretty clear from the only free practice session that McLaren would be going right into the fight with Mercedes – and Ferrari also looked competitive. The disappointment from the break was that Red Bull seemed to be a little further behind.

Late July and August is an interesting time in F1 because legally the teams have to shut down their operations for two full weeks, which is a great way to give everyone a chance to recharge their batteries and have some much needed family time. However, given the competitive nature of the people involved in F1 there is no doubt that the cogs in their brains can’t ever stop turning!

Lando left Zandvoort 83 points behind Kimi Antonelli in the world championship which, of course, is a huge gap – Kimi could miss the next three races and still be ahead even if Lando won them all. But given the rate of development in this first year of the rules cycle as well as the reliability concerns, it is not an impossible task for the reigning world champion to successfully defend his title.

I think back to Miami when McLaren introduced an update and immediately seemed to be a contender for victory that weekend. They then seemed to get a little bit off track when a front wing upgrade didn’t quite deliver the results they expected, but huge credit to Rob Marshall and Peter Prodromou who have led the technical team back on track and have now sealed a pair of victories on pure pace. What was particularly impressive to me was in the final stint of the Dutch Grand Prix, Mercedes opted to pit for soft tyres under the virtual safety car and yet Lando on an old set of hard tyres was just as fast. That is an ominous sign for the opposition.

We seem to be forming a picture now of the different cars’ strengths and weaknesses at this stage of the season – the McLaren seems very fast in the high-speed corners and the Ferrari seems very strong in the slow-speed corners, while the Mercedes is probably the second best in both and therefore overall still arguably the most complete car. Where this picture will now start to get skewed is we are heading into a run of unconventional tracks. Monza and Baku are both pretty unique layouts to the calendar while Madrid is completely new and Singapore is a street circuit. I think that Ferrari has been very clever in scheduling a filming day at the new Madrid track which would have given them some early data and information ahead of the weekend there.

I was pleased to see that George Russell was back on form. It has been a tricky first half of the season for him where he has generally either been behind or just about equal with Antonelli. Zandvoort was the first weekend where he seemed to be on the front foot ahead of Kimi for quite some time. George’s race was compromised early on with a poor start and then he was stuck behind Oscar Piastri which put him on the back foot.

“Oscar is a talented driver but alarm bells will be ringing at McLaren”

Oscar’s performances in the last couple of races is a real concern. He was convincingly beaten for pace by Lando in both Hungary and Holland and his video message in the middle of the race where he said, “Please give me some help with how to drive this thing,” was pretty telling. Although he has been beaten by Lando in 11 out of the last 12 sessions, including the sprint qualifyings, his pace over one lap does seem to be closer than the deficit he has in the races. These two weekends have felt reminiscent of what we saw across Austin, Mexico and Brazil last year where he didn’t really have an explanation for his lack of pace. There is no doubt that Oscar is a talented driver but there will be some alarm bells starting to ring at McLaren if they can’t help him rediscover some form.

There are a lot of rumblings across the paddock now about updates and upgrades and whether Mercedes has reached a point where they are limited by the cost cap. Kimi is unquestionably the championship favourite with the early gap he has built up, but as I write this we will still have 11 race weekends to go and a lot to play for.