F1 half-term report: Norris has best car but must cut out silly blunders

Everyone in the paddock, from mechanics to hospitality staff, is relishing the summer break 14 races into the longest season yet, but none more so than Lando Norris. He is desperate for a “reset” after squandering the chance to narrow the gap to Max Verstappen with a number of stupid (by his own admission) mistakes in recent races.
He is the only genuine contender to Verstappen for the Formula 1 drivers’ title but while the Red Bull driver has largely extracted the potential from his car, Norris has left points on the track, with his starts a particular issue.
He has qualified on pole in one sprint race and two grands prix and lost the lead for all three on the first lap, never to recover it. He insists it is not pressure that has caused his starts to be especially poor when on pole, but after another opening-lap failure in Belgium, in which Norris dropped from fourth to seventh, McLaren will work with him over the coming weeks to identify why he is struggling.
It is the first time Norris has been in a title race — and the first for a while for McLaren too — and, with more experience, the 24-year-old Englishman will undoubtedly feel more comfortable leading from the front. But after Verstappen’s dominant start to the season, the margin for error is almost non-existent and Norris will need a near-perfect second half of the season to overhaul the points deficit.
McLaren have both Norris and Oscar Piastri tied to long-term deals but face a difficult decision over the summer break about whether to prioritise Norris as the clear No1 driver and therefore give him preferential treatment for the remainder of the season. There are only 32 points between the pair in the drivers’ standings.
At the start of the season it was a civil war that threatened to derail Red Bull’s success. There were arguments between Christian Horner and Jos Verstappen, Max’s father, and differing ideals between the Thai and Austrian shareholders, but with those tensions calmed (mostly — the verdict of a female Red Bull employee’s appeal against Horner being cleared of controlling behaviour, which he denies, is expected imminently), it is their opponents they need to worry about.
Last season’s dominance continued into the opening races of this campaign. Sergio Pérez was performing admirably as Verstappen’s team-mate, but since Norris’s victory in Miami the Mexican’s form has nosedived and Verstappen has been holding off the chasing pack almost single-handedly.
Verstappen’s early season form and Norris’s mistakes mean the Dutchman is the firm favourite to win his fourth world title, but there is concern over the direction of Red Bull’s upgrades, with the sizeable package brought to Budapest not providing the expected upturn in performance.
Remarkably, Pérez has managed to end the first part of the season closer to last position in the drivers’ championship than to his team-mate in first but Red Bull are expected to stick with the Mexican despite his poor performances potentially costing them millions of pounds in prize money in the constructors’ championship.
Mercedes’s surprising resurgence and the consistency of both McLaren drivers mean that, with ten races remaining, the championship is one to watch.
So far this season there have been seven different grand prix winners, from four teams, in 14 races. Last year Verstappen dominated, to the point it was almost inevitable that he would win before the drivers had even left their starting-grid spots.
That was what Horner, the Red Bull team principal, described as a “unicorn” season, and this campaign is benefiting from the stability of regulations. A number of implementations by the FIA, motorsport’s governing body, are beginning to be felt in a positive way. These include the cost cap, which is allowing more competitive racing, and the staggered wind-tunnel time, with those at the front getting the least, meaning it is more difficult to upgrade their cars.
It is the third year of the present set of regulations, which focus on ground-effect cars and the importance of downforce. The field is converging and the possibilities for development are diminishing.
While several teams will bring upgrades after the summer break, it is expected that the competitiveness will continue, particularly at tracks such as Singapore, which does not suit Red Bull, and several street circuits with little margin for error.
From George Russell’s disqualification in Spa, to Oliver Bearman’s impressive cameo in Saudi Arabia, there have been endless storylines in a fascinating season. It is also ruthless. Bruno Famin will not return as Alpine team principal after the break, Logan Sargeant is in danger of failing to see out the season at Williams, and Andreas Seidl and Oliver Hoffmann have already been sacked by Audi before they have even officially entered F1.