Making sense of who was really faster in F1 title scrap as rival claims broken down

When Lando Norris dominated the Dutch Grand Prix, handing Max Verstappen the first home defeat of his career, the drivers championship suddenly looked alive.

The margin was still a significant 70 points, but with nine rounds to go, McLaren in the ascendancy and Red Bull Racing struggling to understand where this year’s car had gone wrong, it seems a solid bet Norris could at least force an all-or-nothing showdown in Abu Dhabi, regardless of the margin.

Seven races later and Verstappen tied up his fourth world title with two grands prix to spare, the final two rounds now dead rubbers.

Every F1 qualifying session and race LIVE in 4K on Kayo. New to Kayo? Get your first month for just $1. Limited time offer.

“Really since Zandvoort [after the mid-season break] I feel like I’ve done close to a perfect job,” Norris told Sky Sports after being eliminated from the title fight.

“It was just lost in the first six races.

“The points gap, what it is now, was already [there] after six races. We caught up, it fluctuated a bit, but we could just never pull it back from there.

“I don’t think even if it was a perfect year on my behalf we could’ve won the championship this year, I think Max drove too well. Red Bull and the team did too good for us.

“He drove an incredible season. When he had the quickest car he dominated, when he didn’t he was still there and always on my heels.

“I look forward to next year being in there from the beginning.”

Norris’s claim about the points margin is broadly correct. After six races — to the end of the Miami Grand Prix weekend — he was 53 points behind Verstappen.

After the Las Vegas Grand Prix the margin was 63 points, a difference of less than a point per round.

Cut another way, over the last 12 rounds — from the beginning of the Verstappen victory drought that opened the door to this title challenge, Norris has outscored the Dutchman by just six points in total.

It’s undeniable, therefore, that the damage was done in those early months, for most of which Red Bull Racing’s car was dominant.

But there’s more to the story that that.

“If people are critical and think that I can only win in the best car, then I prove the opposite,” Verstappen said, per De Telegraaf. “If I don’t get credit for this now, then I don’t know what else I can do.

“Would I have become champion in the McLaren? Yes! And much earlier too.”

It reads as incendiary, but the above comes with a clear and glaring condition.

“I’ve now had four beers and two gin and tonics,” the freshly crowned world champion admitted candidly, his title celebrations well underway by the time he spoke to the Dutch media.

It probably shouldn’t be read as anything more than a gibe directed at his friend and vanquished rival.

But Verstappen also isn’t the first person to suggest that Norris and McLaren missed their chances to capitalise on the months he spent vulnerable with a Red Bull Racing car declining in competitiveness.

PIT TALK PODCAST: Max Verstappen is a four-time world champion after finishing fifth in Las Vegas behind a dominant Mercedes one-two, while off the track Formula 1 announces General Motors will enter the sport in 2026 with a new Cadillac-branded team based heavily on Michael Andretti’s failed bid.

WHOSE CAR HAS REALLY BEEN FASTER?

“I would say for 70 per cent of the season we didn’t have the fastest car,” Verstappen claimed.

But it’s not as easy a question to answer as you might instinctively think.

The below ranks the two cars by qualifying performance over the 22 races to date.

Qualifying breakdown

Red Bull Racing: (1) Bahrain, (2) Saudi Arabia, (3) Australia, (4) Japan, (5) China, (6) Miami, (7) Emilia Romagna, (9) Canada, (11) Austria, (14) Belgium, (20) Mexico City, (22) Las Vegas

McLaren: (8) Monaco, (10) Spain, (12) Great Britain, (13) Hungary, (15) Netherlands, (16) Italy, (17) Azerbaijan, (18) Singapore, (19) United States, (21) Sao Paulo

Red Bull Racing in fact emerges ahead on this count, 12-10.

But of course the 2024 season is really a campaign in two parts: the first five rounds, when Red Bull Racing was dominant, and the more competitive second phase.

McLaren brought its first major upgrade to the Miami Grand Prix, from which point the competition became closer. Red Bull Racing was still the outright fastest car that weekend, but Norris won the race, signalling the beginning of his title chase.

Counting only from this point, the qualifying score swings to 10-7 in McLaren’s favour — around a 60-40 split.

But analysing race pace paints a different picture.

Averaging selected laps from both drivers on each team gives us the following breakdown.

Grand prix breakdown

Red Bull Racing: (1) Bahrain, (2) Saudi Arabia, (4) Japan, (5) China, (7) Emilia Romagna, (9) Canada, (11) Austria, (21) Sao Paulo, (22) Las Vegas

McLaren: (6) Miami, (10) Spain, (12) Great Britain, (13) Hungary, (14) Belgium, (15) Netherlands, (16) Italy, (17) Azerbaijan, (18) Singapore, (19) United States, (20) Mexico City

The Australian Grand Prix has been excluded owing to Verstappen’s early retirement. Monaco has also been discounted owing to the unusual nature of that race.

The balance tips 11-9 in McLaren’s favour, a 55-45 split.

If we were to again drop the first five rounds, McLaren would have a massive 11-5 advantage, approximately a 70-30 split — perhaps the basis of Verstappen’s instinctive reaction.

DID NORRIS MAXIMISE THOSE RACES?

Looking at the above race-pace data, Red Bull Racing had nine opportunities to win with the fastest car.

Verstappen won seven of the nine, and in the other two — the Austrian and Las Vegas grands prix — he finished ahead of Norris.

He maximised his chances.

Less can be said for his British rival, however.

Of the 11 races in which McLaren had the faster car, Norris won just three of them — in Miami, the Netherlands and Singapore — with the team picking up another two victories with Piastri in Hungary and Azerbaijan.

Even then, Verstappen finished second in all three of his victories, where Norris finished second to Verstappen for four of the Dutchman’s eight wins.

But the races he failed to win tell the story.

In Spain Norris started from pole but botched his launch. He dropped behind both Verstappen and George Russell, costing valuable race time. He finished second by 2.2 seconds.

Norris led late in the mixed-conditions British Grand Prix but a team-driver strategy error at the final pit stop dropped him to third.

A mistake on the first lap in Belgium dropped him back into the pack, from where he was unable to recover on a weekend he was outclassed by teammate Piastri.

In Italy a weak defence of the lead on the first lap dropped him behind Piastri, and both then fell behind the one-stopping Charles Leclerc at the flag.

He was the victim of a yellow flag in Q1 that left him starting the Azerbaijan Grand Prix 15th while Piastri started second and won the race.

Both cars were slower than the Ferrari in the United States, where Norris was controversially bullied into overtaking Verstappen off the track late in the race for a spot on the podium, for which he was penalised a place. He was behind Verstappen despite starting from pole thanks to his lax defence into turn 1.

McLaren was again slower than Ferrari in Mexico City, where Norris maximised his chances to finish second, splitting the scarlet cars.

In Las Vegas McLaren was simply off the pace, although in the final stint some dramatic changes principally to the differential meant Norris spent the final laps lapping roughly as quickly as the leading Mercedes drivers.

In six of Norris’s eight missed chances either he or the team made a mistake that cost his championship lead significant points.

Worse, at four of those races he finished behind Verstappen despite having the faster car.

HOW MANY POINTS COULD NORRIS HAVE HAD?

After the British Grand Prix a Fox Sports analysis hypothesised Norris could have been trailing Verstappen by just 21 points rather than his actual 84-point deficit — a swing of 63 points — at the halfway mark of the season had he and the team executed better.

If we were to imagine the last 10 races running as close to perfectly as possible for Norris, we’d be talking about the McLaren driver holding a 29-point advantage over Verstappen heading into the final two rounds, 411-382.

That’s because he would’ve held pole and beaten Piastri in Hungary, finished third to second-placed Piastri in Belgium, finished second behind Piastri in Italy and Azerbaijan and then got past Verstappen and onto the podium in the United States.

Of course hypotheticals are only that, and this one is distorted by correcting only for Norris and McLaren’s errors.

Verstappen has had to serve two engine penalties this season — one of which was in Belgium, where he finished fourth but clearly had the pace to win — and he retired from the winnable Australian Grand Prix with a brake fire.

Just those two races alone are enough to generate a 41-point swing against Norris.

He also blew a shot at bigger points with his needlessly aggressive driving in Mexico City, incurring a 20-second penalty that effectively dropped him from fourth to sixth.

Arguably he could have put up more of a fight against the Ferrari drivers in Las Vegas too and gained one or two places had he not simply targeted finishing ahead of Norris to win the title.

It’s also unrealistic to condemn an entire season for not being perfect. Not campaign in motorsport — in any sport — can truly be perfect. Even Verstappen dropped three races last year in the most dominant season in F1 history.

It’s therefore unfair to say Norris should have won this year’s championship.

What we can confidently say, however, is that it should’ve been much closer and probably could have at least mathematically made it to the season finale in Abu Dhabi.

McLAREN IS STILL LEARNING

It’s easy to write off Norris’s early title defeat as a failure, but that would be to ignore the context of this season.

Norris and McLaren were never meant to contend for the championship this season, with 2026 the original target.

“I didn’t even expect to be in a title fight,” Norris told Sky Sports.

“I don’t think I was or we were as a team mentally ready to be like, ‘Oh, now we have to fight against the big boys and execute perfectly’.

“As much as we’d like to believe we were ready, we weren’t, and we paid the price a little bit.

“But also it was us there fighting Max, no-one else. We started the season off worse than the top teams — we were the slowest of the top four — and we’ve ended up as the most consistent and probably the best team.”

McLaren boss Andrea Stella said this season would be a key building block to taking on both title fights next season.

“We are proud that we were challenging him this season,” he said. We just lost a bit too many points at the start of the season, but then we were there with the Verstappen’s pace, which is hopefully just the preparation work for a new challenge that we want to open next season on the driver’s side.”

But there’s also one final perspective to consider in this unpredictable season.

While Verstappen has ultimately cruised to the drivers championship, Red Bull Racing is almost certain to miss out on the teams title — in fact it’s likely to become the first team in more than 40 years to finish third or lower despite fielding the season’s best driver.

You could easily say that Sergio Pérez’s underperformance has cost RBR a chance to defend its title.

But you could just as easily say Pérez has helped Verstappen to his drivers championship.

MORE FORMULA 1

QATAR GP PREVIEW: Leclerc’s Ferrari admission as brutality faces F1 giants in title showdown

‘ALL THE F***ING TIME’: All-time rant sums up Ferrari’s big F1 title race fear… amid 16-year dark cloud

TITLE SHOWDOWN: Piastri tug-of-war star can’t afford to lose… and why two races can shape next F1 era

Whereas Norris has had to split McLaren’s wins with Piastri this season, Verstappen hasn’t had that problem.

Because Pérez has had such an uncompetitive campaign, Verstappen was able to win seven of the first nine grands prix unopposed by his teammate, enabling him to rack up his massive — and decisive — early points lead.

By the time McLaren became competitive, it had a massive mountain to climb.

“There’s pros and cons,” Norris theorised, per Autosport. “There’s pros in that he has to do all of his work on his own, which is hats off to him.

“He doesn’t have someone trying other things with the car — you can’t do A-B tests and things like that because the data is not as valuable when you don’t have someone who is performing at the same level.

“There’s a lot of things that Max can do that are phenomenal — driving at the level he does consistently without a teammate that can push him in any way, [it] certainly makes his life harder from that perspective, also from a team perspective.

“But at the same time there’s no pressure. He doesn’t have to beat anyone in his own team and that comes with some comfort.

“But they go together. Sometimes and in some ways I like having a bit of pressure because it makes me do a slightly better job.”

Regardless of whether it wins the constructors championship, this season will give McLaren much to ponder as it begins planning to redouble its efforts for 2025.

But Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen, even with the drivers title secured, will have plenty to think about too as it weighs up a new approach for next season.