Lando Norris looking for some ‘magic’ to overhaul Piastri

But despite having won three of the four races going into Formula One’s enforced break, he lost out on pole position for Sunday’s Dutch Grand Prix to Oscar Piastri by just 0.012 seconds.

The 25-year-old Briton has spent his summer playing golf at every opportunity to take his handicap into a similar ballpark to the points deficit he faces to his teammate.

That stands at nine and, with 10 races remaining including this one in Zandvoort, he warned that small mistakes and marginal point differentials would be more keenly felt.

It wasn’t so much mistakes that cost him in qualifying, more, he argued, the blustery conditions which created a headwind to deny him time at a key moment on the home straight.

Having looked second best all weekend to date, Piastri called his pole “the definition of peaking at the right time” to tee up what looks likely to be a fifth straight race one-two for the McLaren pair.

The summer reset has done little to enable the rest of the field to close the gap, although Max Verstappen, after some difficult races for Red Bull, was the best of the rest as he had been in the earlier part of the season.

And yet he was still more than quarter of a second slower than the McLarens over the course of one lap which could, in theory, equate to a 20-second deficit to the championship leaders come the race.

“We’ve been struggling for grip and general balance, and luckily qualifying is the best I’ve felt all weekend. P3 is very good for us,” Verstappen said.

Only two drivers have won the Dutch Grand Prix since its return to the grid in 2021 – Verstappen and Norris – and the Orange Army would dearly love the former to win again. But such a result looks little more than a pipe dream.

The remaining races of the season act as an ongoing audition to be Verstappen’s team-mate next season. Racing Bull’s Isack Hadjar is arguably the favourite for that and helped his cause further by impressively parking himself on the second row of the grid besides Verstappen. In contrast, his main rival for the seat, Yuki Tsunoda, did not even make the final 10-minute shoot-out.

Under bright skies following a wet morning, George Russell was fifth fastest while Lewis Hamilton was edged out of P6 by his Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc. But having struggled on Friday despite his aim of getting the fun back in F1 after a torrid time in the early part of his career at Ferrari, he impressed in pushing Leclerc, a driver potentially with the best one-lap pace on the grid, so close.

Qualifying began with Lance Stroll crashing into the barriers and out of the session after touching his tyres on the grass edges of the track, but it was otherwise a session devoid of the drama aside from the top two’s duel.

It became abundantly clear from the opening laps that this was simply a shoot-out between Piastri and Norris. And on a circuit not known for his overtaking opportunities, their respective starts as well as Norris potentially adopting a riskier race strategy could be key factors in deciding the race result.

Mindful of the events at the last race in Hungary where the tactic of a one-stop to Piastri’s two won him the race, Norris said: “It’s going to take the same magic or some good strategy.”

Photograph by Joe Portlock/Getty Images