NORRIS WINS THE LAST DUTCH GRAND PRIX AS VERSTAPPEN CRASHES OUT
Lando Norris won the final Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, taking his second victory in a row after Hungary and finishing 11.5 seconds clear of Kimi Antonelli. George Russell completed the podium, ahead of the two Ferraris of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.
Rain shortly before the start left the track damp, but it had dried enough for the field to go out on slicks. Norris got away cleanly from pole while Antonelli immediately moved past his Mercedes team-mate Russell into second. Oscar Piastri lost out in the early scrapping and dropped to fifth.
The race lasted one lap. Coming through the banked final corner, Max Verstappen put a wheel onto the white line on the greasy surface, lost the car and hit the barrier heavily, sending a wheel and debris across the track. He was unhurt but out of his last home Grand Prix, having qualified seventh, and the race was red-flagged.
The stoppage rewrote the strategy. Oliver Bearman stopped before the restart with an apparent power unit problem and took no further part. McLaren split its cars, moving Norris from mediums to softs and Piastri to hards. Mercedes stayed on mediums and Ferrari on softs. At the restart Antonelli got the jump on Norris and led, while Piastri climbed to third.
The first stops came on lap 18 with Russell, followed by Piastri a lap later. Antonelli, Norris and Leclerc came in three laps after that, Leclerc losing ground with a four-second stop that dropped him behind Piastri and Russell. Hamilton stayed out and inherited the lead, running until lap 26 before rejoining sixth.
From there the Ferraris came forward. Leclerc closed a five-second gap to Piastri and passed him on lap 34, with Hamilton following him through the next time round. Ahead of them, Norris sat inside a second of Antonelli for lap after lap without finding a way past.
Both Mercedes stopped again on lap 41, with Leclerc coming in three laps later for new hards. Norris pitted shortly before lap 50 and handed the lead back to Hamilton, who was by then the only frontrunner still on an old set. Antonelli was struggling on hard tyres, and on lap 53 Norris passed him and Hamilton in short order to take a lead he would not lose.
A virtual safety car on lap 56, caused by Esteban Ocon’s Haas stopping near the first banked corner, gave Ferrari the chance to bring both cars in. Mercedes used it for Antonelli, who fitted softs and lost second place to Russell in the process.
Mercedes reversed that themselves with around seven laps left, ordering Russell to let Antonelli back through so the Italian could attack Norris on fresher rubber. Russell agreed with the call afterwards. It made no difference to the win, and Hamilton then spent the closing laps trying and failing to find a way past Russell for third.
Behind the top six, Liam Lawson took seventh in his stand-in role for the injured Isack Hadjar, scoring Red Bull’s only points of the afternoon and keeping the position despite a ten-second penalty for not slowing sufficiently under yellow flags. Nico Hulkenberg was eighth for Audi. The drive of the day arguably belonged to Fernando Alonso, who ran a long one-stop to climb from eighteenth on the grid to ninth in a difficult Aston Martin. Pierre Gasly took the final point for Alpine. Franco Colapinto had a poor day, collecting a drive-through and then a ten-second penalty of his own.
Norris called it a hard race and one of his better wins. It also completed a hat-trick of Dutch Grand Prix victories for McLaren, after his own win in 2024 and Piastri’s in 2025.
In the championship, Antonelli extended his lead to 59 points, with Russell and Hamilton tied for second on 183. Norris moved up to fourth on 159, ahead of Leclerc. Mercedes still lead the constructors’ standings on 425 points, from Ferrari on 338 and McLaren on 263.
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