Lando Norris delighted with McLaren pace but keeps lid on championship talk

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Lando Norris claimed the pace of his McLaren even surprised him as he overcame a poor start to clinch victory at the Dutch Grand Prix.

Norris was overtaken by home favourite Max Verstappen early on, but soon recovered, passing the reigning Formula One champion on lap 20 before building a comfortable lead, eventually winning by 22.8 seconds.

The 24-year-old was even slightly taken aback by the pace of his car in the first race back from the summer break.

He said: "Obviously, I didn't start in the most optimistic way, but the pace was unbelievable from the beginning, and I could go with Max quite happily at the start.

"I just didn't expect our pace to be probably as good as what it was today, which is a good thing. It's nice to be kind of a little bit surprised by this. And as soon as I got ahead, it was quite straightforward.

"I could push. I had good confidence to push the whole race, save the tyres a little bit, but just get in a good rhythm and go from there. So the car felt amazing."

Norris cut Verstappen's lead to 70 points in the Drivers' Championship with nine races remaining, but was under no illusions as to how difficult the challenge would be to overtake the Red Bull star, and was not keen to talk up his prospects.

"I've been fighting for the championship since the first race of the year. There's no sudden decision of now. I need to do better," he said.

"I've been working hard the whole year and I'm still 70 points behind Max. So it's pretty stupid to think of anything at the minute.

"I just take one race at a time and just keep doing what I'm doing now because there's no point to think ahead and think of the rest. I don't care about it at the minute."