The last Dutch Grand Prix got the full Zandvoort send-off: rain an hour before the start, a home hero in the wall before the first lap was done, and a winner who settled it with one of the passes of the season - around the outside of two cars at once into Tarzan. Lando Norris won from pole for the second race running, and this one took two hours and four minutes to earn.
One lap of orange
Heavy rain stopped just before the pit lane opened, leaving a damp track, slicks all round and a formation lap behind the safety car. At the end of lap 1 Max Verstappen put a wheel on the damp inside edge of the banked final corner, lost the rear on throttle, and hit the outside barrier hard enough to tear a wheel off. He walked away; the race did not. Red flag, and grandstands packed solid with orange watching their man’s last home Grand Prix end before it began. Gabriel Bortoleto spun a full 360 avoiding the wreck and somehow kept going. The restart then delayed itself: Oliver Bearman ‘s Haas stopped with a power-unit failure on the way to the grid, forcing an extra formation lap before the standing restart on lap 5.
The race Antonelli controlled and lost
Andrea Kimi Antonelli won the restart, beating Norris into Tarzan, and for fifty laps managed the gap the way he has managed the whole season - never letting the McLaren close enough to use its overtake deployment. Strategy undid him. Norris ran seven laps longer in the middle stint, took fresh hards on lap 48, and arrived on lap 54 with a tyre advantage just as Antonelli, rears fading, lunged at the off-strategy, not-yet-stopped Lewis Hamilton into Turn 1. Norris braked later than both and swept around the outside of the pair of them - Mercedes and Ferrari dispatched in one corner. When Hamilton ran wide at Turn 10 later that lap, the lead was Norris’s, and an 11.5s win followed.
Mercedes threw what was left at it. Antonelli took softs under the virtual safety car called for Esteban Ocon ‘s stricken Haas on lap 56, and on lap 65 the pit wall ordered George Russell to hand second place to his teammate - Russell questioned it, then obliged. The chase lasted until the softs faded and a second VSC, for the Williams teammates’ collision at Turn 5 on lap 70, ended it. Carlos Sainz collected a 10-second penalty for putting Alexander Albon out of the race; Ferrari’s afternoon peaked with Hamilton asking to be waved past Leclerc, being refused, and offering the radio’s driest line - “Great way of wasting time guys, good job” - before finishing ahead of him anyway. Charles Leclerc took fifth and the fastest lap, 1:14.230.
The drive of the midfield was Fernando Alonso : eighteenth on the grid after a Q1 exit, ninth at the flag on a one-stop, on a day his teammate retired with early damage. Liam Lawson took seventh on his Red Bull debut, surviving a 10-second penalty for failing to slow under yellow flags, and Nico Hülkenberg dodged the lap-1 chaos to finish eighth from thirteenth.
The DNFs
- Max Verstappen - lap 1, crashed at the banked final corner, red flag
- Oliver Bearman - power-unit failure on the way to the lap-5 restart
- Lance Stroll - around lap 45, retired after early damage left the Aston Martin sliding everywhere
- Esteban Ocon - lap 56, power unit, the second Haas engine of the day
- Valtteri Bottas - late on, hydraulics jamming the Cadillac’s active rear wing
- Alexander Albon - lap 70, collision with Sainz, classified 17th
The championship
Second place means Andrea Kimi Antonelli ‘s lead holds at 59 - now over two drivers at once, with George Russell and Lewis Hamilton level on 183 and Russell ahead on wins. Lando Norris is the season’s form driver: two poles, two wins, and 56 points from the last two-and-a-bit rounds have carried him past Leclerc to fourth. Verstappen’s zero leaves him 130 adrift, and even the Orange Army filed out knowing what that number means.
Zandvoort leaves the calendar with a McLaren hat-trick of Dutch GP wins - Norris 2024, Piastri 2025, Norris 2026. Monza is next week, and for the first time since March the question is not whether anyone can beat Antonelli, but whether Norris already is.