Norris fights back against Verstappen to end home hero’s run of Dutch GP wins

McLaren driver Lando Norris charged to a statement victory during the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, overhauling Max Verstappen after his Red Bull rival moved ahead at the start – and denying the Dutchman what would have been a fourth-straight home triumph.

Norris lined up on pole position for Sunday’s race but his hopes of converting it into the win took a hit when Verstappen jumped him off the line and slotted ahead at the first corner, before moving clear and breaking free of the DRS window.

However, Norris gathered himself to mount a fight back as the race developed, finding another level of pace – while Verstappen battled a mid-stint lack of grip – to close back in on the three-time world champion and reclaim a lead he would not relinquish.

Norris only extended his advantage before and after the front-runners’ sole pit stops of the day, eventually taking the chequered flag some 20 seconds clear of Verstappen to add to his Miami win from earlier this season and cut the latter’s championship lead.

Charles Leclerc delivered a similarly impressive drive, climbing from sixth to third to salvage a podium on what has been a challenging weekend for Ferrari, with Oscar Piastri having to settle for fourth in the other McLaren after extending his opening stint and losing track position as a result.

Ferrari’s points tally was boosted by Carlos Sainz’s own rise to fifth, ahead of Sergio Perez’s Red Bull and the Mercedes machines of George Russell and midfield starter Lewis Hamilton – the team mates opting for late second stops to bolt on soft tyres and bid for the fastest lap.

Ninth-placed Pierre Gasly gave Alpine something to celebrate on Oliver Oakes’s first weekend as their new team boss, while Fernando Alonso grabbed the final point on offer for Aston Martin by getting the better of Haas driver Nico Hulkenberg in the closing stages.

Lance Stroll was the 12th driver to cross the line in his Aston but fell back to 13th, behind RB’s Daniel Ricciardo, after he was found guilty of speeding in the pit lane and got slapped with a five-second time penalty by the stewards.

Alex Albon fought valiantly from the back of the grid after his exclusion from a P8 result in qualifying over Williams’s illegal floor upgrade, but despite briefly working his way into the points, he ended up 14th on a two-stop strategy.

Next up were Esteban Ocon and Logan Sargeant in their Alpine and Williams cars, the latter thankful to his mechanics for overnight repairs after his massive FP3 shunt that ruled him out of qualifying, with RB’s Yuki Tsunoda another two-stopper en route to 17th.

Kevin Magnussen went longest of all in the opening stint as he looked to recover from a pit lane start following power unit changes, but the Haas man could manage no more than 18th, followed by Kick Sauber pair Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu, who both pitted twice.

While Russell and Hamilton – the latter also catching the eye with his recovery drive – looked set to post the fastest lap on softs, it was Norris who ultimately clocked the benchmark to secure the bonus on offer and cut Verstappen’s advantage from 78 points to 70 with nine rounds remaining.

AS IT HAPPENED

After two days of mixed weather, drivers were greeted by dry and bright conditions in the build-up to Sunday’s race at the historic Zandvoort Circuit, with tyre supplier Pirelli forecasting that a one-stop strategy would be the best approach to the 72-lap encounter.

A trio of grid changes were set out after qualifying: Albon being excluded and sent to the back due to a floor irregularity on his updated Williams; Hamilton falling from P12 to P14 for impeding Perez; and Magnussen going from P13 to the pit lane due to power unit changes.

When the tyre blankets were removed from each car, it was revealed that most drivers would be starting with the yellow-marked medium rubber, while Tsunoda, Hamilton and Bottas went for the red-marked softs and Magnussen for the white-marked hards.

A few minutes later, it was time for the all-important start procedure and, as the five red lights went out, home hero Verstappen got away well to jump past a relatively sluggish Norris in what is one of the shortest pole-to-Turn 1 runs of the season, while Russell snuck ahead of Piastri for P3.

Leclerc moved up to fifth, from Perez, another fast starter in Gasly and Alonso, with Sainz and Stroll holding the final top-10 positions and Hamilton working his way up to P12 via a fine move on Tsunoda – the entire field appearing to keep their noses clean around the tight, twisty venue.

Aiming to make it four wins on the bounce at his home track, Verstappen edged clear of Norris over the opening handful of laps, the reigning world champion crucially building a lead of more than a second to ensure he was out of danger when it came to the DRS window.

While Verstappen managed the situation up front, only being told to “watch that rear-left sliding”, there was a moment of drama at the back of the field when pit lane-starter Magnussen locked up at Turn 1 and took a trip through the gravel – leaving him with even more work to do.

Replays then showed a smart pass from Sainz around the outside of fellow Spaniard Alonso at the first corner on Lap 8, promoting the Ferrari driver to eighth position as he continued his recovery from gearbox problems on Friday and a Q2 exit on Saturday.

A few hundred metres behind them, and a lap later, Hamilton went for the inside line with a clean overtake on Hulkenberg to get up to 11th and the edge of the points-paying places – despite commenting over the radio that “I’m too slow on the straight”.

Sainz’s charge continued at the start of Lap 11, his Ferrari getting perilously close to Gasly’s Alpine along the start/finish straight before the pair went side-by-side through the opening sequence of corners and the future Williams driver slipped past into the hairpin.

While that battling occurred, there was an unusual radio exchange between the McLaren pit wall and second-placed Norris, with the driver being asked: “Who do you think we are racing? Just Max?” He dryly replied: “I think we are racing everyone, especially the car ahead”.

As the laps ticked by, Norris stepped up the pace and managed to get within DRS range of Verstappen, his engineer adding of the situation: “Probably Plan A. Plan B might be a way to beat Max.” In response, Norris shared his preference for “Plan A”.

Albon was the first driver to pit on Lap 13, swapping his used medium tyres for fresh hards – which prompted Hulkenberg and Tsunoda to stop a tour later. Meanwhile, Hamilton made it into the points by completing another Turn 1 move on Aston Martin rival Stroll and taking 10th.

“The car doesn’t want to turn,” was the message from Verstappen as his first stint developed, with Norris taking half a second out of the leader on Lap 16 to pile on the pressure. Just two tours later, the McLaren man was in the lead via a DRS-assisted pass down the start/finish straight.

Then came more radio chatter between Norris and the pit wall. “We think Plan A,” the Briton was told by his engineer as he moved into clean air and then did his best to break the DRS window back to Verstappen. “He [Verstappen] might try the undercut, but that’s cool.”

Norris went on a charge shortly afterwards, going significantly quicker than Verstappen to move out of DRS range and build a lead of four seconds by Lap 24. “I can’t go faster,” said Verstappen over the radio as the race started to slip away. “The car doesn’t respond to my inputs.”

A couple more stops on Lap 25 saw Hamilton ditch his soft tyres for hards and Leclerc also move to the white-marked rubber. One tour later, Russell was in for the same hard compound to defend against the undercut, but there was no sign of Norris, Verstappen or Piastri pitting.

Verstappen became the first of the top-three drivers to stop on Lap 27, moving from medium tyres to hards, with Norris covering that off next time around and maintaining track position – Piastri assuming a temporary lead from Sainz, as Perez also boxed for new tyres.

After his stop, Hamilton embarked on another charge by clearing Ocon’s Alpine and Haas duo Hulkenberg and Magnussen in quick succession, before moving back into the points when Stroll made his stop for hard tyres. Piastri, Gasly, Alonso and Magnussen were all still yet to pit at this point.

On Lap 33, Piastri finally pitted from the lead to take on the hard tyres, dropping to fifth behind Norris, Verstappen, Leclerc and Russell – albeit with slightly fresher tyres for his second stint. Services for Gasly (who got close to one of the Alpine mechanics when exiting his box) and Alonso left Magnussen as the only driver on his starting tyres.

Following that flurry of pit lane activity, and another phase of rapid laps from the race leader, Norris held an advantage of almost 10 seconds over Verstappen, with Leclerc six seconds further back in third, Russell another four seconds adrift and Piastri rapidly closing in on the Mercedes driver.

While Gasly and Alpine avoided any further action over their near-miss, Stroll was hit with a five-second time penalty after he was found to have broken the speed limit in the pit lane – replays showing him locking up and failing to slow down sufficiently at the entry line.

Continuing to put his new tyres to good use, Piastri went around the outside of Russell at Turn 1 and rose to fourth, while back in the midfield, the yet-to-stop Magnussen got swamped by Albon, Gasly, Alonso and Stroll around the banked final corner in a dramatic sequence.

Gasly went on to win a wheel-to-wheel scrap with Albon into the first turn, with the latter lamenting what he felt was a “dangerous” situation over the radio. Alonso and Stroll soon worked their way past the Williams man as well, while Magnussen finally stopped for new tyres.

By Lap 45, Norris had increased his lead to 12 seconds, with Verstappen managing the gap to Leclerc, Piastri chasing the Ferrari and Russell holding fifth. A few seconds back, Perez had his hands full defending against Sainz, who was looking left, right and centre for a pass.

A couple of laps later, Sainz made a move stick by lunging past Perez at the popular Turn 1 overtaking spot, rising to sixth place in the process, while Hamilton had worked his way up to eighth position, Hulkenberg sat ninth and Gasly occupied the final points-paying place.

Given the significant gap Hamilton boasted over Hulkenberg, he and Mercedes opted for a return to soft tyres with some 22 tours remaining, giving the seven-time world champion a shot at clocking the fastest lap and claiming the bonus point that’s on offer for it.

Russell, who now had a ‘free’ stop over Hamilton, opted for the same tyre switch as his team mate as the race entered its final 15 laps, with midfield runners Albon and Tsunoda, and backmarkers Bottas and Zhou, others to go from one pit lane visit to two.

With 10 laps to go, Norris had boosted his advantage to more than 15 seconds, as team mate Piastri started to hassle Leclerc for the final podium spot. Further down the order, a change to the points positions saw Gasly clear Hulkenberg and move up to ninth.

Hulkenberg’s demise continued shortly after that when Alonso found a way past for 10th, that move proving to be the final change to the top half of the order before the chequered flag fell and Norris bagged a superb win.

Amid a successful, late crack at the fastest lap, Norris ended up with a whopping 22.8 seconds in hand over Verstappen, who could not add to the home wins he scored in 2021, 2022 and 2023, while Leclerc fended off Piastri for an unlikely – but well-earned – place on the podium.

Sainz and Perez took fifth and sixth in the other Ferrari and Red Bull machines, from Mercedes pair Russell and Hamilton, as the lapped Gasly and Alonso rounded out the top-10 places, and points, in the lead Alpine and Aston Martin cars.

Hulkenberg was left to rue what might have been in P11, followed by Ricciardo and the penalised Stroll, with Albon, Ocon, Sargeant, Tsunoda and Magnussen the final drivers to finish the race just one lap down on Norris.

In what turned out to be a particularly painful weekend for Kick Sauber, Bottas and Zhou both finished two laps off the leaders as the team remain at the bottom of the constructors’ standings and without a point to their name this season.

Key quote

“It feels amazing once again,” said Norris. “I wouldn’t say a perfect race, because of Lap 1 again, but afterwards the pace was very strong – the car was unbelievable today. I could get comfortable, I could push and get past Max, which was the main thing, and I just [went] from there. Honestly, [it was] quite a straightforward race. Still tough, but very enjoyable.”

What’s next

The next stop on the 2024 F1 calendar will be the Italian Grand Prix, with the paddock heading straight to Monza for the second round of this double header on August 30-September 1. Head to the RACE HUB to find out how you can follow the action.