Verstappen shouldn’t have won in Canada!

88 points: No Formula 1 team has scored more points in the last three races than McLaren. The competition from Ferrari (65) and Red Bull (62) has not managed to break the 70 mark in this period. But there is one downside: in all three races, a McLaren came in close second, but a win just wasn’t possible. A particularly good opportunity was missed at the last Grand Prix in Canada. At the top, it’s now all about the details.

Lost Canada victory hurts Norris: No longer about 9th or 10th place

“When you’re fighting for 10th place and it’s maybe 9th place, you think, OK, that’s one or two points. But when you finish second and think: I should have won a race…”, Lando Norris is annoyed before the Spanish GP. He doesn’t want to let that happen again: “It hurts a lot, but at the same time it encourages us, because knowing that we should have won means we’re more motivated for the next race weekend and want to try to make up for the last race.”

The battle for victory has recently become something of a new territory for Formula 1. Until recently, the premier class had only known one winner. Norris also reminds us of this: “In the last four or three years, Max [Verstappen] probably make a lot of mistakes and still win easily. And the team [Red Bull] may have made mistakes and he could still win easily.” In Canada, however, the opposite picture emerged: “He shouldn’t have won in Montreal last weekend, but he was probably just the most consistent driver in the race. He and his team made the fewest mistakes.”

Canada has proven once again: McLaren must be top in every detail

McLaren and Norris messed up their strategy: “If you think about the safety car, we should have pitted. That’s why we lost the lead. I lost a chance to fight for the win.” But that’s not all. The Briton also points to another competitor: “George [Russell] had the fastest car and was extremely good all weekend. Pace-wise, and if he hadn’t made a few mistakes, he probably would have had a chance to win the race.”

Montreal was just another confirmation of what Norris says is the way forward: “We always knew it. It’s not like we can just have a better car and then drive off and forget everything else. Now it’s even more important to find the right strategy and do the little things right. Because at the end of the day, when the cars are so similar in terms of pace, these things make a big difference.”

Teammate Oscar Piastri reminds us that this situation is unusual not only for the young driver pairing, but also for the team: “Your mistakes cost a little more. You are fighting against teams that – in the case of Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes – have basically been at the top for a decade. We only recently returned to the top, so in some ways we are less experienced than others.”

The last time McLaren regularly competed for victories was in the 2012 season. At that time, however, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button were two drivers in the car who had already been world champions and had won numerous races. However, Piastri does not want to use the lack of experience at the top as an excuse: “You can’t make mistakes. You can’t give anyone a small chance, because there are people who will take advantage of them and that will cost us.”

Despite all the details, the car’s performance must of course be right in the end. In this regard, the McLaren drivers have confidence in the MCL38 ahead of Barcelona. “I think we should be pretty confident that we’re there,” says Piastri. Norris is also confident: “We’ve been good in all the races so far, so I don’t expect things to change too much. I just expect it to be very close with Ferrari and Red Bull.” Which brings us back to the details.