Lando Norris book-ended the summer break with wins after taking his second consecutive victory in Formula 1’s return from its four-week holiday at the Dutch Grand Prix.
The McLaren driver started on pole, lost the lead early to championship leader Kimi Antonelli, then fought back late in the race to secure the victory in the final grand prix at the Zandvoort Circuit.
“I think yesterday I said that we needed to put on a show for everyone for the final race here, so I made it tough for myself today but a good race, well-fought, probably one of my better wins,” said Norris. “I’m over the moon and nice to win the final race here at Zandvoort.”
F1 announced earlier this year that the race at the Dutch circuit would not return after organizers declined to renew the contract.
To secure the win, Norris got past Antonelli with a bold outside move at Turn 1 on Lap 54 and then overtook leader Lewis Hamilton in the Ferrari a few turns later before cruising to the victory.
“I saw Lewis defending [against Antonelli] and I knew that was my moment,” said Norris, who opened an 11.536-second gap by the finish. “I wasn’t going to get many chances and every lap that I spent behind him [Antonelli] the odds were getting lower and lower, and it won me the race. Well-played from my part – I probably had one chance to really make it happen and I made the most of it.”
Antonelli finished second, with his teammate George Russell rounding out the podium. Hamilton ended the day fourth, with teammate Charles Leclerc fifth.
The win gave Norris 159 points and moved him into fourth in the championship standings, ahead of Leclerc. The weekend saw Antonelli ultimately increase his points lead by nine to 59 ahead of Russell and Hamilton, who both have 183 points.
In the constructors’ championship, Mercedes continues to lead with 425 points, with Ferrari second on 338 and McLaren third at 263.
The race also saw local favourite Max Verstappen of Red Bull crash before the end of the first lap, which brought out a red flag. When things got going again, Antonelli took the lead at the first corner on the restart but could not find consistent speed to deliver a victory.
“It was a very intense race and it was nice to get the lead. Stint one felt okay but from stint two onward I didn’t have the feel of the car and I was sliding a lot overall. Then Lando passed me and I knew I had no chance to win after that,” he said. “Now the team needs to find a little bit of time, because McLaren has done a huge step and we have to keep pushing.”
After being passed by Norris, Antonelli made a late pitstop for soft tires under a virtual safety car and needed to overtake his teammate to get second spot. Meanwhile, Russell needed to put up a staunch defence against a hard-charging Hamilton, who also pitted for soft tires under the late virtual safety car.
“It was tough to hold on with those old tires and happy to be standing here on the podium because it could have gone either way,” said Russell, who ended the day 4.370 seconds behind his teammate. “When you’re in the race you want to fight for every single position, but with his pace on new tires, he would have overtaken me anyway so it was the right decision. It’s been a strong weekend overall for me, so I’ll take the positives.”
On Saturday, Russell won the F1 Sprint, with Leclerc second and Norris third. Antonelli ended the Sprint fourth with McLaren’s Oscar Piastri fifth.
McLaren ended up not being the only team benefiting from upgrades at Zandvoort, with the Aston Martin outfit scoring points for the second time this year with Fernando Alonso’s ninth-place in the GP. The team introduced a heavily redesigned car at the last race in Hungary and a new Honda engine in Zandvoort. Canadian Lance Stroll had a DNF.
Despite two consecutive wins under his belt, Norris hesitated to say that his resurgence puts him back into the title fight.
“It sounds boring but one race at a time,” he said. “There’s no point in thinking that far ahead, I think there’s still plenty of things we can do better and need to do better if we want to fight for a championship.”
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