Norris: Frustrating, but it’s out of my control

Norris suffered from a DNF for the second time this season; his first was in Canada when he rear-ended his teammate Oscar Piastri, but in Zandvoort it was not his fault.

As the Briton was chasing down his teammate, smoke started to come out of the back of his Formula 1 car, the MCL39, which ground to a halt on the track, bringing out a Safety Car.

“It’s just a tough race," Norris told the media after the race. "I was a bit disappointed, but there’s nothing I could really do about it in the end.

"Frustrating, but it’s out of my control, so nothing I could do," Norris, who now trails Piastri by 34 points in the 2025 F1 Championship, insisted.

The manner in which Norris' weekend in Zandvoort unraveled was shocking since he started as the favorite, only for Piastri to beat him for pole in Qualifying on Saturday and then lead the race throughout.

Despite his best efforts and even before his car broke down, Norris was not able to make inroads into Piastri's lead; he explained: "You can’t do a lot around here.

"I felt a bit quicker [than Piastri] but you have to be about eight-tenths quicker to overtake around here and I’m not eight-tenths quicker.

“To follow within two seconds for pretty much the whole race was a good drive. There was nothing more I could really ask. You start to get dirty air at around four seconds. To be around three or two, I wasn’t really expecting it today.

“I thought I did a good job, but it doesn’t help much, doesn’t mean much. It doesn’t mean I got more points or whatever, it’s just reassuring that the pace was strong. I look ahead to the next one," Norris concluded.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella reflected on a bittersweet race for McLaren after they saw a one-two finish slip away, and told Sky Sports F1 after the race: “I think today we experienced the two sides of motorsport.

"On one side, we have the joy, the satisfaction of another victory for McLaren, a deserved victory for Oscar – 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 to win the race.

"It was certainly P1, P2 possible today for McLaren. We had the joy and the pain at the same time, this is motor racing.

"We don’t know yet," the Italian responded when asked about the cause of the issue with Norris' car. "It would be unfair to speculate whether it’s a chassis problem or an engine problem.

"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," Stella concluded. (Reporting by Agnes Carlier)