The McLaren boss highlighted the Briton's performance at Zandvoort. Norris won his second consecutive race, coming from behind and overtaking Antonelli.
Andrea Stella, McLaren team principal, has praised Lando Norris's performance at the Dutch Grand Prix, where the Briton achieved his second consecutive victory: "I think Lando is driving and operating at a very high level in an absolute sense, in relation to being a Formula 1 world champion, I think he is driving at the level of a world champion and as I always say about Lando, what I like most about his trajectory in Formula 1 is that he keeps improving" declared Stella after the race.
Norris, who started from pole, had to come back after losing position to Kimi Antonelli on the second start. The Briton was able to extract more performance from the hard tires than his rival, which allowed him to catch him and overtake him with a bold move: "It's almost as if I see Lando getting stronger and stronger race after race, his weekend was not a weekend in which we could fight for victory after having seen the performance in the sprint, but we invested in trying to understand where the opportunity was from the point of view of tire exploitation and car improvement" stated Stella.
The McLaren boss highlighted Norris's skill in difficult conditions: "I think when you have conditions where the car slides in the race and there's not much grip, then I think he is the master in this type of conditions" he explained, it is worth noting that the Briton was able to maintain a constant pace and even match Antonelli's times, despite the Mercedes driver pitting to fit fresh tires.
Norris's victory at Zandvoort is an important milestone for McLaren, the team has made a considerable turnaround since the start of the season, when they could not fight for podiums: "I think we can confirm that when we are on high downforce circuits with this type of layout we can fight for victory" stated Stella.
Despite the positive moment, Stella did not want to talk about the championship fight: "The real focus we have is just one race at a time, there's not much more you can influence than maximizing what comes next, the next race will be Monza and if we think about the demands of Zandvoort and Hungary and then think about the demands of Monza, we are in a completely different regime" he explained.
Stella acknowledged that Monza will be a different challenge: "We know that aerodynamic drag is not necessarily a strong point of our car, for example, there is a lot of braking, which is not necessarily a strong point of our car, so there are many things we need to confirm for the next race" he stated.
Norris's maturity and McLaren's ability to develop the car are paying off, the Woking team has gone from fighting for points to fighting for wins in a matter of weeks. Confidence is at an all time high, but they know Monza will be a different test, the future looks promising for the papaya team.
Norris has shown that he can fight for wins and is in great form, the second half of the season will be key for McLaren, which seeks to establish itself as one of the reference teams.
