One day Lando Norris and McLaren will get it 100 per cent right rather than between 98pc and 99pc, and a world championship fight will burst into life.
They are so agonisingly close to getting there that Norris is currently berating himself through long days and restless nights.
‘I should have won, I f***ed up the start,’ he bemoaned after finishing the Spanish Grand Prix second to Max You Know Who, with Lewis Hamilton taking his first podium of the season in third place.
Norris is now second in the championship for the first time, 69 behind Verstappen, but he added: ‘Car was amazing. Deserved more.’
He learned, as if he needed any prompting, the truth that if you are hellbent on winning the title that you can’t give Verstappen the slightest sniff. The Dutchman is too good for that, and he proved it again.
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Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona on Sunday afternoon
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Reigning world champion Verstappen has now won seven of the first 10 Grand Prix of 2024
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Verstappen fended off the challenge of Lando Norris (right) with Lewis Hamilton (left) in thir
Only 2.2seconds separated the pair at the end of 66 laps, and Norris was looking at the fractions of difference that made it so. He started on pole – a brilliantly achieved one – and the critical requirement was to exit the first corner in front.
He didn’t manage that. He got off cleanly enough in the initial phase but perhaps lost a little ground in the next, Verstappen pulling alongside him. He kept his elbows out. So much so that Verstappen was briefly pushed on to the grass. A puff of dust.
It was a little aggressive by Norris. Verstappen asked about it afterwards was sanguine, well sort of. ‘I know what to get him for his birthday,’ he said. ‘Either a big mirror or a pair of glasses.’
