Lando Norris makes ‘two is better than one’ dig at Sergio Perez’s expense

Lando Norris has highlighted McLaren’s major advantage of having two F1 cars in the fight with a slight dig at Sergio Perez following the Canadian Grand Prix.

While Max Verstappen stormed to his sixth victory of the 2024 F1 campaign, Sergio Perez was knocked out in Q1 before crashing out of the race, trundling back to the pit lane with a damaged front wing.

With Ferrari failing to score, Red Bull’s lead was extended in the constructors’ championship, but Perez’s stuttering form will be a cause for concern.

Norris was keen to point out that McLaren have two cars in the fight, while Verstappen is often up there on his own.

4Assessing the constructors’ battle, Norris said: “To be honest, at the minute, I think between Ferrari and us, Yeah, so we'll keep pushing and I think that's one of our biggest strengths at the minute.

“We have two drivers as McLaren who are up there not making mistakes and getting pretty much everything out of the car every single weekend. Yeah, it's rare that there's not many other teams on the grid that have such a thing. So for us, it's more out of what we can do against Ferrari.

“Again, we've been a more consistent team coming into this weekend. They've had some mistakes and just struggled a little bit more for whatever reason. But in the end of the day, I think two is going to be better than one, you know, in Max's case. So we're doing a good job, but we still need to keep pushing on and try and bring more upgrades and things like that.

“Because with Mercedes joining, it's only going to make it harder to score big points like we did today.”

Verstappen isn’t too concerned about Red Bull’s chances of winning the constructors’ championship this year “as long as you keep winning”.

“I think the damage was done yesterday, of course, for Checo,” Verstappen added. “You know, starting in the back, it's very hard in these conditions. Then, of course, I saw him retire with the damage.

“So I knew that I had to score big, of course, to not let the other teams catch up a lot. But I do think at the end of the day, as long as you keep winning, so you score 25 points, even if the others finish P2, P3, you don't really lose out too much. And then, you know, you kind of can afford sometimes these one-offs. But of course, naturally, we always want the two cars to be up there. And I also have no doubt that that will change very soon again.

“So, yeah, we just need to work on our car, to be honest, to make it a bit easier to drive also, probably, to feel a bit more comfortable. And then I'm sure that we have both cars back up there like we had in the beginning of the season.”