That was a race which moved Lando Norris up the high Formula 1 ladder a step or two in terms of greatness rankings.
His pole position effort in qualifying was one of those ‘where on earth did that lap time come from’ moments, and he was set fair for the short run down to the first corner.
Max Verstappen drove a great lap too in order to prevent an all-McLaren front row, with Oscar Piastri liming up third in the sister McLaren. We know by now just how good Piastri is, and that only served to underline how comfortable Norris was in his further upgraded McLaren.
We were told this upgrade was worth about 30 per cent of the improvement they made back in Miami, which changed the game for the team at the time. So not only theoretically worthwhile, but unlike some teams, also positively measurable on the stopwatch.
It was a strange weekend weather wise with plenty of rain and strong winds playing havoc with preparations for the race. This left many drivers and teams scratching their heads more than a little as their pace ebbed and flowed. And if they caught a gust of wind at the wrong corner or changed their handling balance forward or rearward a touch too much, their performance on track could be all over the place.
We saw some big differences between team-mates on the grid, and the likes of Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton particularly suffered with not making the Q3 top-10 shootout.
Hamilton would suffer more pain by attracting a three-place grid drop for impeding Sergio Perez. Given the short and twisty nature of the circuit it was all a touch unfortunate and there’s not much else he could have done, but in the end, it was a fair and consistent penalty.
‘A painful weekend for Williams’
His pain was nothing like that of Williams. Logan Sargeant destroyed his car in a most expensive fashion early in Saturday morning’s practice with a strange accident when he kept his foot in despite wandering on to wet grass. This also cost everyone else valuable track time due to the ensuing and long red flag period in order to fix the barriers.
Then after a fine qualifying by Alex Albon in an updated Williams to make eighth on the grid, his new pieces were found to be three millimetres too wide in one place and he was duly disqualified and sent to the back of the grid, with the team obliged to break out their grinder and sandpaper.
On the subject of the track, because of the way my 16-race-per-season schedule has fallen, this is the first time I’ve attended Zandvoort since it returned to the calendar in 2021. We all know the reason there’s been big demand for a Dutch GP, but when wandering the circuit for Sky Sports F1 in Practice Two on Friday afternoon it surprised me how old school it is out there.
I know the track well from racing F1 there in the 1980s but the grip, speed and mass of the latest cars will challenge a few of those barriers with the wrong accident, and there are no service roads in places, making car recovery difficult.
But that’s the same at street circuits and the old school nature does throw up some unique challenges. The banking in turns one Tarzan, three Hugenholtz and the final corner definitely add some character.
‘Norris might need his own chequered-flag punchline’
Race day would be dry but remain windy. The main media narrative was whether Norris could lead the first lap from pole position and use his pace to win the race. That question was answered almost immediately when in fact both McLarens were slow away from the line, and each lost a place.
Verstappen led the race and immediately pulled out a lead of more than one second so that Norris was out of DRS rear wing open range. DRS is particularly powerful here because the teams run very high wing levels and downforce, such as they would on a street circuit due to the twisty nature, and so more drag is discarded given that they can open the wing in the final banked corner and effectively extend the pit straight.
A strong tailwind on that straight mitigated some of this advantage but when running close enough and having more fundamental speed than the car in front, an overtake was highly probable even if it had to be finished off on the brakes into the gently banked first corner. Spot on.
Limited Friday data suggested that the McLaren was kinder to its tyres on longer runs than the Red Bull, and so it proved to be. Just as Verstappen got on the radio to his Red Bull team saying that he was struggling to turn the car and find grip, Norris started to catch him.
They would persevere for a while but Norris relatively easily caught and passed Verstappen and then moved ahead. What a turnaround this is from what we’ve witnessed these past two and a half years.
Tyre wear was better than most had thought, and Lewis Hamilton was proving that, having started on soft compound tyres to make up some early places from his lowly grid position, making them last 23 laps when 15-18 was expected. Alex Albon had pitted for new hard compound tyres as early as lap 12 and started flying. It was clearly a good tyre on the day.
Verstappen pitted on lap 27 for a new set of hard compound tyres, and Norris, now leading him by 5.6 seconds, duly pitted the following lap to cover that off. He kept advantage over Verstappen but on those tyres then proceeded to basically check out and win the race at will. He was blisteringly fast and underlined this by setting the fastest lap of the race on the final tour to take an extra world championship point and win by a massive 22.9 seconds.
To make that even more ‘Verstappen like’, on the slow down lap on the radio he mimicked his mate Max by saying ‘simply lovely’. If Lando keeps performing like that he’s going to need his own punchline.
‘Max sends firm message to Red Bull’
Once Max knew he had no answer to Lando I suspect he didn’t totally wring the neck of the Red Bull thereafter. All the better to give the team a firm message in underlined capital letters that they have some serious and urgent performance work to do.
Behind him Charles Leclerc drove a very fine race to grab a podium for Ferrari. They had struggled much of the weekend but came good on race day, underlined by Carlos Sainz recovering to fifth place too.
Between the two Ferraris was Piastri in the second McLaren. He spent a lot of time tucked up behind other cars, and having to wait until lap 33 for his one and only pit stop didn’t pay off in the end either. He was blisteringly fast in clear air but will be smarting from finishing 27 seconds behind his winning team-mate.
Mercedes had a disappointing day. George Russell ran third initially, but a two-stop medium-hard-soft tyre strategy would see him end up seventh from fourth on the grid. His team-mate Hamilton made his way up to eighth from 14th on the grid, just five seconds behind Russell for a frustrating race of what might have been.
One of the standout drives of the race was an aggressive and feisty effort from Pierre Gasly in his Alpine. He would finish ninth for two well-earned world championship points, having made some great overtakes.
Fernando Alonso would secure the final championship point for Aston Martin on a weekend where they had mostly looked more competitive than that.
There’s no time to draw breath, it’s Monza in a few days.
Sky Sports F1’s live Italian GP schedule
Thursday August 29
2pm: Drivers’ Press Conference
Friday August 30
8.30am: F3 Practice
9.55am: F2 Practice
12pm: Italian GP Practice One (session starts 12.30am)
1.55pm: F3 Qualifying
2.50pm: F2 Qualifying
3.45pm: Italian GP Practice Two (session starts 4pm)
5.15pm: The F1 Show
Saturday August 31
8.25am: F3 Sprint
11.15am: Italian GP Practice Three (session starts 11.30am)
1.10pm: F2 Sprint
2.15pm: Italian GP Qualifying build-up
3pm: ITALIAN GP QUALIFYING*
5pm: Ted’s Qualifying Notebook
Sunday September 1
7:30am: F3 Feature Race
9am: F2 Feature Race
11am: Porsche Supercup
12:30pm: Grand Prix Sunday: Italian GP build-up
2pm: The ITALIAN GRAND PRIX
4pm: Chequered Flag: Italian GP reaction
5pm: Ted’s Notebook
*also live on Sky Sports Main Event
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