McLaren leads the pack as Red Bull are being reeled in

A lap or two more. That's all Lando Norris needed, he insisted, to overhaul Max Verstappen at the end of the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix on Sunday and stand on the top step of the podium for the second race running.

- KIERAN JACKSON

He could well be right. From a margin as large as eight seconds with 20-odd laps to go – with Norris himself thwarting Charles Leclerc’s challenge behind him – the McLaren driver cut the deficit to the leader to 0.7 seconds by the chequered flag, with both Verstappen and Norris pushing their machinery to the absolute limit, no holds barred.

On an Imola circuit with only one DRS zone, could Norris have actually overtaken Verstappen at the death? We’ll never know. What the surprise late onslaught does tell us though – in what was, until that point, a largely uneventful 63-lap race – is that it seems Red Bull are no longer the indestructible, uncatchable juggernaut of 2023.

To the relief of most fans of Formula One, the chasing pack is finally carving away at their advantage. “The first half [of the race] was very strong but the second half of that last stint, Lando started to catch us very quickly,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said. “The cars are converging after the latest upgrades, they are looking very similar. McLaren were very quick at this circuit and Ferrari as well.”

This season already tells us that the gap is closing. While Red Bull claimed an astonishing 21 wins from 22 races last year, they’ve already missed out twice this year after seven grands prix.