McLaren issue 'best of Lando' promise after 'day of pain' for Norris

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has no doubt F1 will now see 'the best of Lando Norris' after the British driver suffered a gut-wrenching retirement in the Dutch Grand Prix.

Although losing second off the grid to Red Bull's Max Verstappen, Norris quickly managed to make amends and then kept team-mate Oscar Piastri honest throughout the race, and, in particular, after two restarts following a horror day for Ferrari.

Norris was within 1.5 seconds of Piastri in the closing stages, and poised to make a possible challenge over the closing laps when 18 points slipped through his fingers with a suspected power unit issue.

Norris now faces a considerable 34-point deficit to Piastri with nine races remaining.

Assessing a bitter-sweet day for McLaren, speaking to Sky Sports F1, Stella said: "Today, we experienced the two sides of motorsport.

"On one side, we have the joy, the satisfaction for another victory for McLaren, a victory for Oscar, a deserved one. He ran a very strong and clean weekend.

"And on the opposite side, we have the disappointment and the pain for our retirement. Lando was in contention to try and win the race. He was certainly happy. A one-two possible for McLaren, so we have the joy and the pain at the same time. This is motor racing."

There is now a question mark as to how Norris will respond given the deficit, and whether it can be bridged, given the two cars are identical, and the margins between the two drivers are wafer-thin.

Asked whether Norris could pick himself up and still contend for the championship, Stella replied: "100% Absolutely, no doubt, absolutely no hesitation.

"If possible, we will even see the best of Lando as he tries to recover the points he missed.

"And he missed the points ultimately, and this is not ideal, because of a problem that happened on the car, which is a situation that definitely we wouldn't want to have.

"We would like to give the same opportunity to both drivers, but I'm sure Lando will give his best, and we will definitely try and recover the points that we missed today."

Stella, meanwhile, insisted it would be "unfair to speculate" early on the issue that undermined Norris' championship challenge, adding: "We are one team. We go together.

"There's no difference in terms of where the responsibility lies. We will review. We will see where the problem is. We will fix it, and we will go again."