F1 Review: A memorable goodbye
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NETHERLANDS -- The popularity of four-time world champion Max Verstappen shows up at track after track with the "Oranje Army," the Dutch spelling of Orange, a popular color in the Netherlands because of the country's royal family the House of Orange-Nassau. His home country wanted to cash in on that popularity too, so some four million euros were invested to improve the track at Zandvoort, and the Netherlands returned to the Formula 1 (F1) calendar in 2021, coming back from an absence since 1985.
Verstappen lived up to all of his hype, giving the home fans something to cheer about from 2021 - 2025. In those five years, he never qualified lower than third and never finished lower than second with wins in the first three years. This season marked the last time F1 will race in Zandvoort for the foreseeable future as the costs are getting too high for the privately run track.
To say goodbye to his home race, Verstappen qualified in sixth for the sprint race, finished it in sixth, qualified in seventh for the feature race, and crashed into the wall at the end of the first lap. None of those results are what Verstappen was hoping for, obviously, but his Red Bull hasn't been able to compete at the front so far this season. If anything, the team took a step backwards for the weekend.
Verstappen's crash was not the result of a clash with another car, but an unfortunate mishap. He put a tire onto the white line at the bottom of the banking in the wet part of the track, lost traction, corrected as best he could, but was just a passenger as his car careened up the track and into the outer wall. While it wasn't actively raining, there were two heavy showers that passed through the area before the race started and parts of the track were still a little damp.
That was basically the story throughout the weekend, rain just before F1 sessions. The track was never horrible, but it was also never in its best shape for the tires to get optimal grip. The first practice session had cars off track frequently, but they were able to stay primarily on track and out of the walls through sprint qualifying and the sprint race.
In fact, the sprint race was pretty formulaic overall. The starting grid was George Russell (Mercedes) on pole, then Lando Norris (McLaren), Charles Leclerc (Ferrari), Oscar Piastri (McLaren), Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes), Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari), and Pierre Gasly (Alpine). The race finished with Russell winning, then Leclerc, Norris, Antonelli, Piastri, Verstappen, Hamilton, Gasly. Only two passes in 24 laps of racing for that front group.
After the race, Norris said his car just wasn't fast enough to compete well and that's why McLaren was the only team that lost positions in the points finishers. Later in the afternoon, he put his car in pole position for the feature race. Russell continued to impress, getting second, then the order was Antonelli, Piastri, Hamilton, Leclerc, and Verstappen in seventh.
Russell botched his start, allowing Antonelli through to second, but Russell moved over to block Piastri from his charge forward. This allowed Leclerc, who had passed his teammate, to get alongside the pair and he eventually settled into fourth. Verstappen's crash then happened behind this group and brought out a red flag, stopping the race so they could recover his car and clean up the carbon fiber debris strewn across the track. Fortunately, all the other drivers managed to avoid hitting the stricken Verstappen and the unrelated spin of Gabriel Bortoletto just behind.
After the track was cleaned, the cars went back out on track, doing a formation lap and lining up for a standing race restart. Oddly, the green/red light at the end of the pit lane randomly switched back to red causing several cars to stop at the end of the pit lane instead of continuing to stream out with the other cars.
This caused a huge gap among the cars during the formation lap, and those in the front end were sitting on the grid for a long time. F1 cars hate being stationary and tend to overheat quickly, and the tires also lose temperature putting them outside their optimal operating window. Adding to the headache, Oliver Bearman's Haas died en route to the grid, his car now stricken in the middle of the course. Confusion reigned on the grid with drivers unsure where to line up, causing a huge gap on the right side of the track. All the chaos led to an aborted start, and the cars went around once more.
This time they were all successful in lining up and the second start was underway. Antonelli got a great start, passing Norris for the lead. Piastri streamed past Leclerc on the restart and caught Russell unaware in a corner, stealing third place in an impressive move.
Even more impressive, Piastri was doing this on new hard tires which shouldn't be as grippy as fast as the soft tires Leclerc was on or the medium tires Russell was on. Originally, Piastri started on medium tires, as did his teammate Norris. However, with the red flag stoppage, teams are allowed to switch tires on the cars. This also meant Piastri satisfied the regulations that require one tire compound (soft, medium, hard) change in the race, so, if they lasted, Piastri would never need to do a pit stop. Rocketing up to third position was not what the team expected, so it looked like he was in a great position.
On lap 17, Mercedes brought Russell in from fourth position for a pit stop. Newer tires would definitely give him a quicker car, but with 18 seconds needed for a pit stop at Zandvoort, surely McLaren would look at Piastri's lap times and make the best decision on what they should do. Instead, they called him into the pits on the next lap to cover off a potential undercut by Russell. Unfortunately, they bungled their pit stop and by the time they got Piastri out, he was more than a second behind Russell.
This defied all logic. Norris, in second place, was left out on soft tires. Piastri, in third, was brought in despite having the harder tires meaning he could run long and, even if he needed to stop later in the race, Russell almost certainly would too. There was absolutely no reason (that I could see from the luxury of my couch) to bring Piastri in at that point, and the results were disastrous.
The team called on Piastri to push hard on this new set of hard tires they gave him to try to pass Russell on track. Such passes are hard to come by on the undulating track of Zandvoort, but Piastri tried and used up his tires pretty quickly in doing so. This left him a sitting duck to the later pitting Ferrari cars who both passed him with relative ease. Piastri languished in sixth place for the rest of the race.
Despite bungling Piastri's race completely, the team nailed it for Norris. He pitted at the right time, they left him out on his hard tire stint to use the tires (which they should've done with Piastri) so he had a tire offset that allowed him to catch Antonelli easily late in the race. Hamilton had stayed out in the hopes another safety car intervention might be called allowing him a cheaper pit stop, but no such luck.
For the first time in many, many races, the top three cars were all within a second of one another. Norris was able to pass Antonelli in a bold outside move to get second place, and dispatched Hamilton on the next lap to take the race lead through on track passing. It was quite an exciting few laps.
From there, the lead was sealed for Norris. Antonelli and Hamilton both came in for a late pit stop when a virtual safety car was called when Esteban Ocon's Haas quit on him. Norris and Russell both stayed out, making them first and second on track. With 17 laps to go, Antonelli and Hamilton caught up Russell reasonably quickly with their new tires despite his ten second lead.
As they closed in, Mercedes was worried about Hamilton's pace in fourth. Despite the fact that Russell is very much fighting Antonelli for the driver's championship, the team came on the radio and asked Russell to let his teammate through. This, too, defied logic as Antonelli would be better suited to keep Hamilton behind as they were on the same tires. The offset between Hamilton and Russell meant he would be a sitting duck if he let Antonelli past.
Still, Russell acquiesced and Antonelli sailed past. Hamilton was quickly on Russell's tail, but shockingly could not make it through giving Mercedes second and third place. Russell got eight points for his win in the sprint race compared to five points for Antonelli who finished in fourth. In the feature race, Antonelli's second place netted him 18 points compared to 15 for Russell in third. So, Russell's three-point gain was wiped out by team orders. I'm guessing there will be many conversations within the team about that.
Worth mentioning as a highlight of the race is the driver and team that finished in ninth position, earning two points. Aston Martin has had a horrid start to the season, fighting with only Cadillac for the last four positions on track. They had a huge batch of upgrades in the previous race, and their Honda engine was set to have a large update at Zandvoort.
Since they were able to make it to the second round of qualifying in the last race, they hoped that would easily be the case here. Fernando Alonso, their top driver, qualified in last for the sprint race after a rear wing malfunction and finished in 18th. He set a great time towards the end of the first qualifying session for the feature race and said over the radio, "Good practice for Q2," the second round of qualifying. Then, several drivers bested his time and he was booted down to 18th position for the race.
On soft tires, Alonso went 34 laps (out of 72) before pitting once. Piastri could've gone so long before needing to pit... Anyway, Alonso was able to turn this into a legitimate ninth place finish, ahead of Gasly's Alpine that was showing great pace throughout the weekend. This is huge progress for Aston Martin and is hopefully a sign of more competitive races in their future.
A two-week break gives teams a chance to figure out what happened in Zandvoort before racing resumes on Sunday, Sept. 6, at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. Antonelli returns to his home soil as the championship leader for the Italian Grand Prix in Monza at the track nicknamed the "Temple of Speed."