Lando Norris: I’m fed up of the excuses

Building a frontrunning car is one thing, but converting that into regular victories is another. McLaren’s recent strike rate isn’t good enough and Lando Norris’s exhortation after finishing third at Silverstone sums up the pain he and the McLaren team are going through.

“I’m fed up of saying I should have done better, I should have done this and I could have done that,” he said. “I don’t want it to take time. We should be winning now.”

McLaren, Norris and Oscar Piastri are enduring a period of sharpening that can only happen in the intense heat of competition. Team principal Andrea Stella’s refrain after races to the effect of ‘we take the learning from this experience’ might ring hollow, but this is a team becoming battle-hardened.

Red Bull’s ruthlessness is the counterpoint. The RB20 remains F1’s fastest car, but the more all-round and consistent McLaren is arguably its best given the narrow window Max Verstappen must dance in. To win requires perfection – or, at least, less imperfection than the rest.

Red Bull went through this way back in 2009-10. For more than a year after its first victory in China, it lost more races than it won and only narrowly won the 2010 titles with Sebastian Vettel. Come 2011, it was crushingly dominant.

Imola, Monaco, Canada, Spain, Austria, Britain – the races McLaren could have won recently is much larger than those it has. But the second half of this season could be essential to making it ready to win the big prize next year.