Lando Norris Wins Zandvoort Farewell As McLaren Completes Hat-Trick

Lando Norris converted pole position into victory at the final confirmed running of the Dutch Grand Prix, backing up his Hungarian Grand Prix win with a second consecutive victory and delivering McLaren’s third straight win at Zandvoort.

• Lando Norris won from pole for his second consecutive victory, while his teammate Oscar Piastri fought back from a troubled middle stint to finish sixth after a slow pit stop cost him track position.
• Max Verstappen’s home race ended on the opening lap when he lost the car alone on a rain dampened track and hit the wall just after the final corner, triggering a red flag that reset tyre strategy for the entire field.
• Kimi Antonelli stretched his championship lead to 242 points with second place, while George Russell moved to second in the standings over Lewis Hamilton despite both finishing the round on 183 points.

A Red Flag On The Opening Lap

An unexpected shower shortly before the cars left the grid left the Zandvoort circuit damp at the start, catching several drivers out on the drive to their grid slots. Norris made a clean getaway from pole, while Piastri lost ground in the opening exchanges and slipped to fifth. The race lasted barely a lap before Verstappen dipped a wheel across the white line on the run out of the final corner, lost the rear of the car and hit the wall heavily. He climbed out unhurt, but his home race was over, and the red flag came out to allow the barriers to be repaired.

When racing resumed, Antonelli made the sharper restart and swept past Norris for the lead, while Piastri rose to third by getting the better of Russell. The stoppage had already reshuffled the strategic picture. Norris, who had started on Mediums, switched to Softs during the interruption, while Piastri fitted Hards. Mercedes kept both cars on Mediums through the restart, and Ferrari sent both drivers out on Softs, setting up a race that was always going to fragment and reconverge as the differing tyre choices played out.

Norris Times His Stops To Perfection

Norris held station with Antonelli through the opening stint and both pitted for Hards on lap 21. He spent the next stint unable to find a way past the Mercedes, and McLaren had an undercut planned for lap 40, only for Antonelli to pit first and remove the option. Norris stayed out for seven laps longer than planned, rejoining six seconds behind but on a set of Hards with a strong pace advantage over Antonelli’s. He reeled the Mercedes in and passed it on lap 53, then moved into the lead shortly after by getting past a long running Lewis Hamilton. A late Virtual Safety Car briefly threatened to bunch the field, but Norris held a comfortable enough gap to win by 11.536 seconds.

Norris was frank about how close the race had felt from the cockpit. “I’m incredibly happy to take the win at the final race here in Zandvoort, but it was a real fight,” he said. “For the first half of the race, especially on the Soft tyre, I honestly didn’t think a win was possible. I struggled a lot with the pace and balance, and it felt like a bit of a repeat of Saturday’s struggles. However, once we put the Hard tyres on, the car came alive. I felt much more comfortable, I could push, and we were able to put Mercedes under pressure, forcing them into an early stop which ultimately opened the door for us.”

“The team’s strategy was perfect, and that gave me the opportunity on fresh tyres to attack while Kimi was battling with Lewis,” he continued. “I knew that was my one and only chance, and I had to make it stick. Committing to the outside of Turn 1 was the move that won us the race. Despite the win, I’m not fully satisfied. We still have weaknesses, particularly in the slow speed corners, and we need to improve if we want to fight for the championship. I’ll be pushing the team harder than ever because the work doesn’t stop here; we need more performance.”

Piastri’s Afternoon Unravels

Piastri had shown promising pace through the first stint before pitting on lap 18 in an attempt to cover off an undercut from Russell. A slow stop undid the move, dropping him out behind the Mercedes before both Ferraris came through and demoted him to sixth. He took another set of Hards on lap 44 but was not fully convinced by the C2 compound’s performance, and it was only in the closing laps, after a Virtual Safety Car on lap 52 prompted another stop, that he found a rhythm across two short Soft tyre stints to bring the car home.

Piastri described the race as frustrating and disappointing afterwards. “The main positive we can take away is the start and the first lap after the Red Flag,” he said, pointing to the only stretch of the afternoon where his pace had matched his own expectations.

Antonelli And Russell Make Sense Of A Bittersweet Podium

Antonelli was open about the disappointment of leading for long stretches without winning. “I am disappointed to have led so many laps today and not won,” he said. “Unfortunately, the pace wasn’t quite there, and that’s a shame. P2 was ultimately the maximum we could have done, though, given that, so we must be happy coming away with that and a double podium secured. It is a great result for the team with George doing a brilliant job to keep the Ferraris behind and take P3.”

“We made two good starts and gained places at both,” he added. “That gave us belief we could fight for victory, but I didn’t have the feeling with the car on the second set of Hard tyres and that was when Lando was able to get past. I was a little nervous in the closing stages after we pitted under the Virtual Safety Car, but it turned out well. We were able to have both cars finish ahead of the Ferraris and extend our lead in the Constructors’ Championship, which is a good feeling leaving Zandvoort.”

Russell described a weekend where the pace of the two teams ahead of Mercedes had caught the team by surprise. “We did our best today, and it was clear that we were going to have a tough time of it defending from Lando and the Ferraris, who were incredibly fast,” he said. “The field is even more competitive than at any point during the season; that said, the pace of both McLaren and Ferrari has surprised us. To come away with a Sprint victory and a P3 is a solid return, therefore, on what has been a challenging weekend from a pace perspective.”

“My race wasn’t the smoothest,” he said. “I lost a couple of positions early on, but was able to fight my way back to P3. That became P2 when Kimi pitted under the Virtual Safety Car, but ultimately, Kimi was ahead of me before that, so the position was his. It was clear that we couldn’t cost ourselves any time fighting, as we needed to protect from the Ferraris behind, too. If we had, we would have likely lost a lot of time, and I would have lost the podium. In the end, we were able to maximise the result for the team, and that’s positives.”

A Hat-Trick To Close The Chapter

This is McLaren’s third consecutive Dutch Grand Prix victory, following wins in 2024 and 2025, and it arrives in what stands for now as the last confirmed running of the event before it drops off the calendar. The parallel with Zandvoort’s previous farewell runs deep: the circuit’s last appearance before its 36 year absence, in 1985, was also won by a McLaren driver, Niki Lauda, in what turned out to be the 25th and final Formula 1 victory of his career. Three decades on, it is Norris, F1’s reigning world champion, sending the venue off in the same fashion.

Team principal Andrea Stella said the win confirmed the progress the team made in Hungary and showed it remains in contention for victories, while stressing that Formula 1 is incredibly close at the moment and that rivals will continue bringing their own upgrades. Getting the most from the MCL40 across the remaining rounds, rather than any one result, is what he framed as the team’s real task from here.

Strategy Splinters Across The Field

The red flag reshaped tyre strategy well beyond the podium finishers. Antonelli and Russell both kept their starting Mediums through the stoppage before each taking two stops for fresh Hards, with Antonelli adding a set of used Softs under the late Virtual Safety Car and Russell choosing not to stop under that neutralisation. Both Ferraris restarted on Softs, but Charles Leclerc’s race then diverged from his teammate’s, running all three available compounds across four separate stints where Hamilton avoided a final stop altogether, completing his afternoon on Hard and then Soft tyres.

Fernando Alonso took a different route again, fitting a fresh set of Softs during the red flag and making only one further stop, for Hards, saving himself a pit stop compared to most of the field and coming home ninth as a result. Across the whole race, Alonso ran the longest single stint on Softs at 32 laps, Arvid Lindblad covered 31 laps on Mediums, and Carlos Sainz’s 35 laps on Hards was the longest stint on any compound in the race. Pirelli’s motorsport director, Dario Marrafuschi, said an unexpected rain shower before the start had kept the track from evolving as expected, one of the reasons the 60 total pit stops and roughly ten distinct strategies across the field were needed to make sense of a changeable afternoon.

Antonelli Stretches His Championship Lead

Antonelli’s second place moves him to 242 points in the drivers’ championship, extending his advantage over the rest of the field. Russell holds third on 183 points, ahead of Hamilton on the same points tally, with the Zandvoort result doing little to close the gap at the top before the calendar heads into its final stretch.

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• Lando Norris Admits His McLaren Is ‘Nowhere Near Good Enough’ to Fight for the Title After Zandvoort Sprint Frustration
• Russell Wins Zandvoort Sprint, Norris To Start On Pole
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• George Russell takes Sprint pole in the Netherlands

Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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