Verstappen and Red Bull have continued their dominant form established in the second half of 2022, with the Dutchman winning the 2024 season’s first two races from pole by a big margin before a braking problem caused him an early retirement in the Australian Grand Prix.
Despite there being another year to go after this season until 2026, when F1 will switch to vastly different cars and power units, Norris is convinced there is little scope for other teams to catch up.
“No, I think for things to really shake up, you need to wait until 2026,” he said. “I think that could potentially be a big shake-up for every team, including the power units probably being one of the biggest things.
“Now there’s not really anything between the power units between teams, but a lot more between cars. I expect Red Bull, being the team that they are, to always carry an advantage because they’re ahead.”
Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Shameem Fahath
Norris said he does hope that Red Bull will “run out of ideas” before then, as even McLaren’s huge gains compared to this time last year haven’t been enough to get close.
“They’re just as smart, smarter in many ways, that if they do just as good of a job as any other team, they should always carry the advantage that they have, but you do hope that they start to run out of good ideas,” the Briton explained.
“I think every team is catching up. Even if you look at our 12 months of progress from last year, we’ve been the team who have developed the most and we’re the best developing team over the last 12 months.
“So, when you look at it from that perspective, I think we can be very happy with the job that we’re doing. But it’s not enough and it’s not close enough to challenge them.”
