Formula 1 ®
Lando Norris beats Max in his own backyard! Refuses to think about the Championship yet. Leclerc on the podium good for Ferrari, Perez in the points. LCH finishes behind team mate George Russell. Gasly makes his Alpine-Renault look good and, El Machismo Fernando in 10th.
ZANDVOORT, Netherlands (AP) — Lando Norris overcame a poor start to win the Dutch Grand Prix on Sunday and become the first driver to beat Max Verstappen at the champion’s home race, as well as taking another bite out of Verstappen’s standings lead.
Norris started on pole position but was slow off the line, allowing Red Bull driver Verstappen into the lead. Norris closed the gap and overtook Verstappen into the opening corner on the 18th lap of 72 and was then on course for his second career win and the McLaren team’s third of the year.
Max finished second and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was third after holding off Norris’ teammate Oscar Piastri.
Verstappen is without a win in five races, his longest winless run since 2020, and loses his record as the only driver to win at the Dutch Grand Prix since it returned to the F1 schedule in 2021. Norris is the first McLaren driver to win in the Netherlands since Niki Lauda in 1985.
Norris beat Max Verstappen in the Dutch driver’s backyard to ignite his hopes of winning the Formula One world championship. Norris might have feared the worst after he allowed Verstappen to blast ahead of him following another poor start for the Briton here in Zandvoort.
Max
“Today the start was good and we got a lead in front, which was a positive start. However, once I was overtaken it became about managing my own race as I know I didn’t have the pace to catch Lando. The car balance has been difficult this weekend, we just didn’t have the pace and we struggled with our tyres. I tried my best but it just didn’t work today and we had quite a big gap to Lando. We didn’t have our best weekend and we will go back and analyse what we can do better. It is my 200th race and it was nice to drive in front of my home crowd. Those races have gone by quickly and when I grew up this was something I thought about; I imagine I will look back and be proud of this moment. It was great to be here in front of home Grand Prix and in front of fans, but it is a shame as you always want to win for them.”
Christian
“Firstly, congratulations to McLaren and Lando, their car was in a different league today. We did everything we could and Max converted P2 into a lead at the start, but you could see he couldn’t compete with Lando’s pace. In hindsight the gamble we made with more downforce, following very little Friday running, perhaps wasn’t the best route. We need to understand where the deficit is to McLaren and how we can improve performance on our car, we have some idea and will work hard to do that.
We are going to have to respond and I am confident we have the strength and depth to do that. Max has a 70-point lead in the Drivers’ Championship but we have to keep scoring as a Team and on the days we can’t win you have to finish second. Checo had a solid drive too and looking at his pace he looked strong, particularly in the second half of the race, which is positive. So, we have plenty of work to do but we have learnt a lot of lessons this weekend that can be very valuable, we have tried some things on the car that we have good data from to assess. We need to make sure we use that; it is time to digest what happened here and try to bounce back in Monza.”
Fernando
RACE P10
“We knew that the top-four teams would take the top-eight positions today, so our fight was for P9 and P10. However, we didn’t have the pace we needed and Pierre [Gasly] did a better job than us, so we had to settle for P10 and one point. It was a challenging race and we need to do more to understand the car to find where we can improve. We’ll work through the data, both here and at the Campus, before racing again next week in Italy.”
