By Alan Baldwin
ZANDVOORT, Netherlands (Reuters) -Formula One title contender Lando Norris vowed a full-on response for the rest of the season after a Dutch Grand Prix retirement dealt a significant blow to his championship hopes on Sunday.
Norris will have his work cut out. He is 34 points behind McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri with nine rounds, plus three sprint races, remaining and the Australian a model of consistency and exuding quiet confidence.
Piastri has won seven times this campaign, to Norris’ five, and been off the podium only twice in 15 races. Apart from ninth in his home season-opener, he has not finished lower than fourth.
“The only thing I can do is try to win every race. That’s going to be difficult but I’ll make sure I give it everything I can,” Norris told reporters after retiring from second place with seven laps to go at Zandvoort.
“The pace was very strong today. There are so many positives, it’s just close. I have a good teammate, he’s strong, he’s quick in every situation, every scenario.
“It’s hard to get things back on someone who’s just good in pretty much every situation.”
Norris missed out on pole position to Piastri by milliseconds on Saturday, small margins making a huge difference at a track where overtaking — particularly a rival with the same car and engine — is difficult.
The Briton had been accused of getting lucky in some previous wins but he could not be accused of that on Sunday.
Norris had not suffered a retirement due to reliability, rather than a crash or collision, since a gearbox failure in Brazil in 2022.
Modern F1 engines and cars are so reliable that the sight of a driver pulling over is now rare compared to the not so distant past.
“It’s just unlucky, it’s not my fault and sometimes that’s just racing,” Norris said.
“It certainly hasn’t helped (the championship battle), it’s only made it harder for me and put me under more pressure.
“But it’s almost a big enough gap now that I can just chill out about it and just go for it.”
McLaren have refrained from imposing any team orders on their drivers, other than telling them not to collide and show mutual respect under so-called ‘Papaya rules’.
With the team so far ahead in the constructors’ standings — their lead over Ferrari now stretched to 324 points — that the title will soon be retained and any brake on the drivers’ duel released.
That individual battle remains a two-horse race with Piastri now 104 points clear of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, his closest rival outside McLaren.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Ken Ferris)
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