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Laurence Edmondson, F1 Editor
Off the back of his victory at the Dutch Grand Prix, Lando Norris is now convinced McLaren has the fastest car in Formula One.
Norris took his second race win of the season at Zandvoort, beating championship leader Max Verstappen to the chequered flag by a massive 22 seconds.
Despite the win, Norris remains 70 points adrift of Verstappen in the championship with nine races left to run.
At the start of the season, Verstappen’s Red Bull was clearly the fastest car — winning four of the first five races — but Norris is now convinced his McLaren is the class of the field.
“Oh, 100%, yeah,” he said. “Today, this whole weekend, I think we’ve had the best car.
“I think we’ve, on average, had the best car, for sure. We’ve not had a dominant car at any point this season, I would say.
“Obviously we see, we know more information than people do on the outside, so we can comment in a much more factual ways than people can who are just watching on TV and taking their picks and guesses.
“We’ve had, on average, the best car.
“You know, we probably should have won two, three more races as a team, but we didn’t. And we’re not saying anything more than that.”
When asked if he now felt like he was in a genuine title fight with Verstappen, Norris added: “I mean, I’ve been fighting for the championship since the first race of the year. There’s no sudden decision of now. I need to do better. I’ve been working hard the whole year and I’m still 70 points behind Max.
“So it’s pretty stupid to think of anything at the minute. I just take one race at a time and just keep doing what I’m doing now because there’s no point to think ahead and think of the rest.
“I don’t care about it at the minute. Yeah, focused on one race at a time. So it’s not a question that I need to get asked every single weekend.”
Source: www.espn.com