McLaren brought their first significant upgrade list since Miami to Zandvoort and this saw them make changes to their brake scoop, front and rear suspension, floor, rear wing and beam wing ahead of the on track action in Zandvoort.

While some of these were targeting improved overall performance, the updated rear and beam wings were circuit specific high-downforce specifications, and the aim of these changes were, in Lando’s words “to go quicker, to provide more grip” and “go faster”.

So was it this upgrade that made the difference to Red Bull?

According to McLaren’s team principal, Andrea Stella, the answer is no as he said following the race that this performance advantage had far exceeded their expectations of the upgrade package.

Instead, it seems that Red Bull had tried to counteract McLaren’s impressive pace through having better tyre degradation and a more loaded rear wing, expecting that tyre degradation would be high on Sunday.

But unfortunately for them this didn’t work out, and instead, Verstappen suffered from grip issues on the hard compound, while Lando was able to charge away and claim the fastest lap of the race on his 44 lap old hard tyres.

Whether this advantage will carry over to a vastly different circuit and a new track surface in Monza will be very telling as to what’s to come for the rest of the season…but either way, it seems we’re in for a championship battle after all…