Norris ‘driving at the level of a World Champion’ says Stella after Zandvoort

Andrea Stella has praised race-winner Lando Norris in the wake of the Dutch Grand Prix, which the McLaren man won from pole. But that does not tell the full story of the race, with Norris having to catch and pass Kimi Antonelli on track to ensure he took victory.

Stella watched as his driver bided his time after falling behind Antonelli at the second standing start, with Norris able to extract more pace on the hard compound tyre than his rival.

That enabled Norris to catch and then pass Antonelli with a brilliantly daring move, made more difficult by the presence of Lewis Hamilton in front – Ferrari having yet to pit their man and leaving the seven-time World Champion out of position.

Norris was able to pull away out in front, and even lapped at the same times as Antonelli despite the Mercedes driver pitting again for fresh rubber, with the Briton’s ability to switch on his tyres during a day where many of his rivals struggled impressing his boss no end.

“I think Lando is driving and operating at very high level, in absolute sense, in relation to [being] Formula 1 World Champion,” Stella said after the race.

“I think he's driving at the level of a World Champion and like I always say for Lando, what I like the most of his journey in Formula 1 is that he keeps improving. I think especially after the start of the 2025 season, something clicked.

“It's almost like I see Lando getting stronger and stronger race by race, because I think his weekend was nowhere near a weekend in which we could fight for the victory… after having seen the performance in the Sprint.

“But we invested in trying to understand where was the opportunity from a tyre exploitation point of view and car improvement… I think when you have conditions in which the car slides in the race, there's not much grip, then I think he is the master in this kind of conditions.”

Norris’ victory in Zandvoort was his second Grand Prix victory in a row, as he continues to make good use of the raft of upgrades McLaren introduced in Hungary. Considering where the team started the year, off the podium and with neither car even able to begin the race in China, it has been some turnaround.

With Max Verstappen showing last year just how big a margin can be closed down in the second half of the season, talk has turned to whether Norris can now defend his title. He is 83 points behind Antonelli as it stands.

But Stella would not be drawn on any championship talk, instead maintaining the team is just focusing on the next race.

“The real approach we have is just one race at a time. There's not much more you can influence than just maximising what's next," he explained.

“The next race will be Monza and if we think of the demands of Zandvoort and Hungary, and then we think about the demands of Monza, we are in a completely different regime. So, I think if we can confirm our improvements in Monza then… yes, we can look with some optimism of the remainder of the season.

“We know that drag is not necessarily a point of strength of our car, for instance. There's a lot of braking [in Monza], which is not necessarily a point of strength to our car. So, there's a whole lot of things that we need to confirm as we head on to the next race.

“But so far, I think we can confirm that when we are at high downforce circuits, with this sort of layout, then we can fight for victory.”