A month off, and the season resumes with a goodbye. Zandvoort leaves the calendar after 2026, so this weekend is the last Dutch Grand Prix - the final orange invasion of the dunes, the final laps around the banking, and, in a piece of scheduling nobody planned, the first and only Zandvoort sprint. The circuit that returned in 2021 as the home of a champion checks out with its hero seventh in the standings, driving a car he described in Hungary as completely broken.
The championship
The break froze the table at an awkward moment for everyone chasing. Andrea Kimi Antonelli sits on 219 with a 50-point lead; Hungary proved he can collect podiums even on his messy weekends. The man arriving with momentum is Lando Norris - pole and a win at the Hungaroring, his first Grand Prix victory since last November, and a car that has been the field’s fastest on Sundays for a month. Thirty-three points a weekend are on the table here. Ninety-one points is a lot of ground. It is not unreachable ground.
One seat changes hands
The break’s biggest news came from Red Bull, twice. First: Isack Hadjar cracked a bone in his wrist training during the shutdown and misses this weekend. Liam Lawson steps up from RB to partner Verstappen - his first Red Bull start - while Yuki Tsunoda comes off the bench to take the RB seat alongside Arvid Lindblad . Hadjar, sixth in Hungary and the season’s quiet overachiever, hopes to be back for Monza. Second: Max Verstappen signed a new contract through 2030, ending a summer of exit-clause speculation in the least 2026 way possible - committing his prime to a team currently fourth in the constructors’ standings.
“I think I was closer to retiring than changing teams!”
What Zandvoort asks of the cars
Short lap, narrow ribbon, two banked corners - Hugenholtz at Turn 3 and the 18-degree final banking that slings cars onto the pit straight. Downforce and commitment are everything; overtaking, as ever here, is mostly a qualifying problem. The sprint format compresses all of it: one practice session on Friday morning, then straight into sprint qualifying with dune wind, sea air and a track that evolves lap by lap. The North Sea weather is the wildcard - it has rained on this race weekend more often than not.
The storylines
Three straight Zandvoort wins from 2021 to 2023, and now a farewell edition in the worst Red Bull he has driven - McLaren have won the two runnings since. The grandstands will be a wall of orange regardless. A podium would feel like a win; anything more would be the story of the season’s second half.
Hungary ended the drought and the Mercedes pole streak in one Saturday. A sprint weekend offers 33 points - if the McLaren’s Sunday pace is real, Zandvoort is where the 91-point gap has to start shrinking.
Lawson gets the Red Bull seat for a weekend with no testing, no practice margin and a sprint format. Every lap is a job interview - for the seat Hadjar wants back, and for the one Tsunoda never stopped wanting.