Lando Norris faces a crucial test to win the 2024 Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix, having to beat Max Verstappen at the start of the race, while his performances this season have been heavily criticised.

Norris lost potential victories in Spain and Hungary when he failed to convert pole position into a lead exiting the first corner in those events. He currently has a 0-3 record in wins from the first grid position.

As he prepares to start from his fourth pole position of his Formula 1 career on Sunday in Zandvoort, Norris ignored this statistic during the press conference after qualifying on Saturday.

“To be honest, statistics don’t mean much to me,” he said.

“I’ve often started at the front or towards the front. I know my stats aren’t the best for that and more often than not, I’ve fallen back a bit instead of holding positions.

“People can write whatever they want. They can have their own opinions. A lot of these things are true and facts to people. But yeah, it’s more that I use them to my advantage and improve my weaknesses. It’s as simple as that.”

But the pressure on this area of ​​Norris’s skills will be considerable in Sunday’s race. Overtaking will be scarce for the front-runners in a dry race, with the wider, faster, lower-downforce track used last time at Spa leaving little room to pass each other.

Poleman Lando Norris, McLaren F1 Team

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

The race in the Netherlands also followed the situation where Norris went too wide in the first corner of the Belgian GP, ​​causing his positions to shift. McLaren therefore promised to launch an investigation into what had happened in the run-up to the summer break.

Team principal Rob Marshall said at the start of the weekend in Zandvoort that McLaren “are not worried about our starting performance” because “if you look at the numbers I think we started quite well”.

It wasn’t Norris’ reaction times in Spain and Hungary that were the problem. It was the second phase of the starts where he lost out to Verstappen and teammate Oscar Piastri respectively.

Marshall said: “There are others who are a bit better, but we’re not worried about them,” while Norris’ own assessment was: “I know my starts the last (races) probably haven’t been my strongest point… (but) they weren’t bad.

“Honestly, I’m still one of the best average starters,” he added. “I just missed a few races and maybe a little bit worse than what it has been over the course of a season.”

Norris also maintained that “there have been a few times when they haven’t quite been where they need to be, and I’ve had a few front row seats,” but he indicated that it has been for different reasons each time.

In Hungary he said a gearbox problem had cost him crucial momentum, while in Spain he blamed a ‘drive out’ phase that did not match Verstappen’s.

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W14, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB19, Lando Norris, McLaren MCL60, Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL60, Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-23, the rest of the field at the start

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

“They weren’t there for any particular reason,” Norris added. “They were different things every time.

“But I’m confident that I’ve worked hard to make my starts a little bit better.”

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said after qualifying at Zandvoort that his team has been working on improving “the combination of the execution from the drivers, but also what the engineers can support in terms of tyre preparation, clutch settings and throttle mapping”.

This came after Stella concluded that “we definitely had a bit of a performance gap behind us (in some races), so there were a few things we had to adjust”.

Stella explained that in the Hungary example, “the first two seconds were probably done when there was a bit too much wheelspin and therefore the acceleration was cut back and he was slow, and therefore you lose momentum in what is a combination of the status of the car with wheelspin”.

He admitted that Norris could have “controlled the wheelspin better” that day, but also maintained that “our settings were probably not the best for those conditions”.

“In Hungary and Spain there was also the fact that there were two long straights until Turn 1 and there was also the slipstream effect,” Stella added. (George) Russell was the one who benefited in Barcelona, ​​thanks to the slipstream (from fourth to the lead on the exit of Turn 1, where Verstappen also passed Norris).”

Poleman Lando Norris, McLaren F1 Team

Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images

The run-up to the first corner at Zandvoort is short enough – 164 metres compared to 549 metres and 472 metres in Spain and Hungary – that it shouldn’t play a major role in Sunday’s race.

But given Norris’ mistake at the first corner in Belgium and the fact he is up against a driver trying to achieve a perfect Formula 1 winning record in front of his home crowd, the pressure will mount if he has to go head-to-head with Verstappen in the early stages.

And with Red Bull having significantly improved its starting systems last year, motorsport consultant Helmut Marko Norris was keen to put the pressure on ahead of Sunday’s race.

“If you see how difficult overtaking was in Spa, it’s probably impossible here,” he told Red Bull’s own TV channel ServusTV.

“You mentioned Lando Norris’ ‘weakness’. He knows Max is strong. It will definitely be an interesting first (corner).”

But Stella, who had closely studied Norris’s various starting mistakes in 2024, concluded that his driver made no mistakes in the early stages of the corners.

“If you look at Lando’s onboard in Hungary in the first corner, he performed a small miracle by trying not to hit Oscar and not to hit Verstappen on the outside,” Stella said, although she did not immediately comment on what Norris did at Spa.

Andrea Stella, Team Principal, McLaren F1 Team, Lando Norris, McLaren F1 Team, Zak Brown, CEO, McLaren Racing, talks after the race

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“So I don’t think he could have done much better than that without taking serious risks of having a collision. And in a similar way this happened in Barcelona.

“And also in Barcelona I have to say, on a circuit where pace is so important, you can overtake, you can gain positions, but sometimes you just have to give up a little bit from a risk-taking point of view – because the race comes to you later.

“The problem in Barcelona was that it was difficult to overtake the Mercedes and we therefore lost quite a bit of time to Verstappen who was driving (in front of us).

“So I personally couldn’t see much improvement in what I saw in the approach to the first corner without taking risks that I myself would have judged as ‘that was too much risk’ in my conversation with the drivers.

“I’d rather stay in the race, I’d rather see if we can make up positions when the situation is such that if you try too hard you can be out of the race on the first lap.

“And when you have this kind of pace (to beat the Formula 1 qualifying sessions), this kind of performance, then you want to get to the chequered flag.”

The outcome of the start at Zandvoort and the order of the Tarzan on Sunday are therefore even more important than usual for McLaren’s hopes of reaching that point and taking a third race win of 2024.