It was a record equalling ninth consecutive victory and third Dutch GP win for Max Verstappen.
It wasn’t quite the Max and Liam show, but the world champion continued on his winning way, while Kiwi Liam Lawson made his F1 debut, adding spice to the story of the Dutch GP.
Verstappen admitted his third win in the race and record-equalling ninth consecutive grand prix win was anything but easy.
A downpour just after the start of the race, and a heavier one towards the end of the race, caused havoc for the drivers, team strategists and mechanics. For Lawson, who was called in to race in place of an injured Daniel Ricciardo at the 11th hour, it was a baptism by fire.
Or maybe that should be water. As the reserve driver for both the Red Bull and Alpha Tauri teams, he found out after Practice 2 on the Friday that he would be replacing Ricciardo after the latter broke his left hand after crashing into the barriers to avoid T-boning the McLaren of Oscar Piastri that was strewn sideways across the track after he had spun into the barriers moments earlier.
Lawson had one practice session before qualifying, with both sessions held in wet weather.
He had a spin in practice and unsurprisingly qualified last of the 20 cars. But in the race itself, despite a 10-second time penalty for impeding a Kein Magnussen’s Haas car in pitlane, Lawson kept his car on the track, finishing 13th, and more particularly, ahead of his experienced teammate Yuki Tsunoda, who finished 16th.
The focus of the race wasn’t of course on the rookie, who became the 10th New Zealander to start an F1 race. A total of 305,000 race fans packed into the coastal Zandvoort circuit that could easily be renamed Sandvoort, given the amount of sand that blows onto the track that is set in sand dunes.
Most were decked in orange shirts to see their home hero win yet again, and he didn’t disappoint, but given the inclement weather, it was never a certainty, despite starting from pole position.
The rain came after just two laps into the race, sending some drivers into the pits, while others stayed out, hoping it was just a passing shower.
As usual Red Bull got it right, first pitting Sergio Perez, who had started in seventh place but was soon leading, as he was the first to pit for full wet tyres.
Verstappen, and Fernando Alonso pitted on the next lap from first and second place respectively, and had to fight their way back to the front, as they were overtaken in the pits by the early stoppers.
Alonso, who would finish the race in second place, had started from fifth on the grid, but overtook both George Russell in the Mercedes, and Lando Norris in the McLaren, at Turn 3 on the opening lap.
That sort of heroics would earn the 42-year-old Spaniard the fan vote as driver of the race, but more importantly for Alonso, it was his first podium since Canada, and meant the upgrades on the Aston Martin worked and kept him ahead of Lewis Hamilton in the fight for third place in the championship.
For Verstappen, once he got the nose of his car in front, not even the weather, two safety-car interventions, and a red flag to extract the stricken Alfa Romeo of Zhou Guanyu from the barriers was going to prevent him from taking win number 11 for the season and his ninth consecutive victory, equalling the record previously held by Sebastian Vettel when he was a four-time world champion with Red Bull between 2010 and 2013.
When asked about that, Verstappen wasn’t going to be distracted from enjoying winning his home grand prix for a third consecutive time.
“I’ll think about that next week,’ he said.
“I’m first going to enjoy this weekend. It’s always tough, the pressure is on to perform, and I’m very happy of course to win here.”
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner happily acknowledged the achievement.
“In all the team had a very strong day and for Max to match Seb Vettel’s record of nine consecutive victories, it’s incredible. The fact that we’ve achieved it twice as a team is something very special to us.”
Red Bull have won all 13 grand prix to date, with Verstappen winning 11 and Perez taking two. The gap between them now in the championship, with nine races to go, is 138 points. In Hamilton’s seven titles, he had 11 wins in one season in four of those championships. Last year Verstappen won a record 15 times, so is on course to break his own record.
“I feel extremely proud to win the Dutch Grand Prix again and to win nine in a row is a massive achievement, I never thought it would be possible,” he noted. “It’s always amazing to be here and the National Anthem before the grand prix really gave me goosebumps. Of course, there were a lot of hectic moments today with the rain coming in, the race was all about trying to stay calm and make the right calls at the right time and we did just that.”
Horner was quizzed by Sky Sports as to whether the team strategy favoured Verstappen over Perez, given the latter only finished fourth after a five-second time penalty for speeding in the pitlane and going off at the first corner, which allowed Alonso to overtake him.
It seems it was two driver errors that cost Perez, but nonetheless, Horner was on the defensive.
“It’s tricky, because when you are the first car, very hard to make that call,” Horner said.
“Checo pulled the trigger, made a great call, got in, the team reacted super-fast, and we got him back out. We then got Max in immediately, others we were surprised to see stay out. And then of course Max started coming through the field so quickly.”
Verstappen was brought in first for the second stop due to what Alonso and Pirre Gasly did, which was switching to slicks before the rain came again.
“If we’d pitted Checo first and Max the second lap, we had the risk of coming out after that had shaken down as being first and fourth.”
Perez diplomatically accepted the team made the right call because “the team just has more information than we do at the time. So it is something we obviously will review during the meeting, and I’m sure there‘s a reason behind it.”
For Alonso, it was a great race despite the conditions, starting fifth and finishing second. He came close to trying to overtake Verstappen in the closing laps but joked about not getting out of the circuit if he’d tried that.
“I did think about trying to move on the last restart, but then I thought maybe I can’t exit the circuit, so I stayed calm in second!
“It was a very intense race, obviously at the beginning with the wet conditions, we were very, very fast,” he added. “We stopped maybe one lap too late, but the same as the leaders. The car was flying today, very competitive, very easy to drive. So, in these conditions, you need a car that you can trust and I did trust the car.
“I did enjoy, thanks to all the fans for the energy that we get here in Zandvoort - it is very unique. Two years ago, when this race came, I thought I would never experience the Zandvoort podium because I was not in the position to think about that. Today, it’s gonna be very special to share the podium with Max and Pierre.”
For Gasly, it was a huge joy and surprise to him to be on that podium.
“What a race! It feels really good to be on the podium here in Zandvoort and the entire team deserves this,” the Alpine driver said. “After the season we have had so far, so many ups and downs, I do feel we deserve this result. It was an insane race, so much action, so many tough calls to make but everything went well.”
That couldn’t be said for Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren. Charles Leclerc had a damaged floor on his Ferrari and didn’t finish the race. He had drifted back through the field and being overtaken by rookie Lawson rubbed salt in the wound.
Carlos Sainz in the other Ferrari battled his way to fifth place, holding out Hamilton, who was frustrated by the Mercedes strategy which team boss Toto Wolff admitted they got “completely, completely wrong”.
For Lawson, there was much for him to reflect on and be proud of on his F1 debut.
“Throughout the race, I mean, I was obviously learning a huge amount, so the first part wasn’t the best, we lost a lot of time with the stacking in the pit stop and in the penalty,” he noted.
“But in the second half, I think I started to get a bit of feeling on the softs in the clean air and then on the inters as well. I felt more comfortable than yesterday, that’s for sure.”
Verstappen had some pre-race advice for Lawson:
“Just don’t overthink it and try to enjoy it,” Liam said Max had told him.
He will get another chance to get more comfortable this weekend, in the Italian GP at Monza. Welcome to the big time of motor racing, Liam.
MetService says one of the first big low-pressure systems of the year is forming.