Lando Norris offers fascinating McLaren insight after 'losing the fire'

Lando Norris has explained how he and his McLaren team made a remarkable recovery at the Dutch Grand Prix, after 'losing the fire' in the Sprint race.

Norris finished third in the Sprint, struggling with the balance of his MCL40, before roaring to pole position, but upon the grand prix restart from the early red flag, he slipped behind Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli, who looked comfortable out in the lead.

However, a change to the hard compound tyres unlocked Norris, who unleashed a ferocious pace and passed Antonelli on track for the lead, and eventually went onto win by 11.536s to record his 13th grand prix win, and second in succession following Hungary before the break. 

Speaking about where he rates the win among his collection, Norris then gave fascinating insight into how he saved his weekend on Saturday evening - and how this unleashed his potential in the grand prix once he moved onto the hard tyres.

"[I rate the win] pretty high, from a point of just very well fought in many ways, and more than that is the turnaround from Saturday to Sunday," Norris told media, including RacingNews365. 

"I was pretty disappointed [on Saturday], it kind of took a little bit of the fire out of me, seeing how much we struggled in the Sprint. I know it’s just a Sprint, but every point matters and we just really didn’t have the pace. 

"I didn’t have that something that gave me life inside the car. On Saturday night, we worked very, very hard. I spent a lot of time with my engineers to understand what we could do better, how to push more, save the tyres more, how to do everything in a better way than I’ve done and better than everyone else. 

"And I certainly believe I did that. So apart from the start, it was a little bit of a mix of races because the beginning in the first stint was pretty bad and kind of reminded me of the Sprint, but we put the hard tyres on and things came alive and the race really started to come back to me.

"It’s just the knowledge of being able to win. I didn’t have that [in the Sprint]. 

"I didn’t think we had the pace to win, or we didn’t have the pace to win, and that didn’t give me a lot of hope for the race, even with the pole, and certainly not after lap one and getting done off the line, and even the first stint. 

"But, I know when the car gives me what I want, on top of that when I’m driving at the level I am now, I can win races, and that’s exactly what I went from the first stint, I didn’t have what I wanted from the car. 

"We put on the hard tyres, we were a bit more aggressive with how we wanted to approach the stint, we turned things around, and I had that feeling in the car that I wanted. And I went from just not feeling like I was going to win a race to: "at least we can force [Antonelli] to make mistakes."

"He started to make a lot more mistakes when I was behind him. We forced Mercedes to do something with strategy. This opened up our availability to push, to extend, so, it’s just when I get what I need from a car, when I have the front I want, when I’ve got the confidence with the rear on entries, just when I get what I need to be able to know and predict every single corner, I’m going to win a race. 

"But if I don’t have that, even like the first stint, then there’s not much I can do."