McLaren’s Oscar Piastri led the F1 Dutch Grand Prix from lights to flag to take his seventh victory of the season, while teammate and championship challenger Lando Norris failed to finish in a race that may be the turning point of the 2025 title fight.
The win, combined with Norris’ retirement, means that Piastri leads the drivers standings with 309 points, 34 points more than his title rival with nine races to go, putting him more than a full race win ahead of Norris’ 275 points.
“Obviously, it was a little unfortunate for Lando at the end, but I was in control of that one and just used the pace when I needed to,” said Piastri. “I’m very happy with all the work we’ve done to try and improve around here and very satisfied to come out on top.
“The car this weekend was looking like a difficult one, but we managed to get it together in qualifying and I was happy with the race I had today,” he continued. “A couple of safety cars spiced it up a little but we weathered it all.”
Piastri finished 1.271 seconds ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, with Isack Hadjar taking his first career F1 podium in third, crossing the line 3.233 seconds behind the winner. Mercedes driver George Russell and Williams’ Alex Albon rounded out the top-five.
On Saturday, Piastri pipped teammate Norris for pole by a scant 0.0012 seconds and the race promised to be a close battle between the two championship rivals. Although Piastri got away well off the start and built a small gap, a safety car caused by Ferrari‘s Lewis Hamilton crashing at Turn 3, on Lap 24, helped Norris erase a three-second gap to his teammate, but when things went back to green, he couldn’t get close enough to make a pass for the lead.
That scenario repeated after the safety car came out again, following a collision between Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli on Lap 55, as Piastri successfully streaked away for a second time on a restart.
The race soon ended in tears for Norris when his car spewed blue smoke on Lap 65 and he retired with an engine failure. After the failure, the TV cameras caught an emotional Norris sitting alone and dejected beside the track as he came to terms with the outcome.
“I’m disappointed but there’s really nothing I can do about it, it’s out of my control,” said Norris in the post-race interviews. “I felt a bit quicker [than Piastri] but you have to be about eight-tenths quicker to overtake around here so I just followed him by two seconds pretty much the whole race.”
Even with the retirement of one car, McLaren gained another 25 points on Ferrari in the constructors championship after neither scarlet car finished. McLaren continues to run away with the team title, now leading by 324 points, 584-260.
With Norris out, Verstappen happily moved up to the second step on the podium at home after working hard to keep up with the two McLarens for most of the race.
“It wasn’t easy,” said Verstappen, who lies third in driver points, with 205. “I gave it everything at the start to move forward, but after that we just had to do our own race because we didn’t have the pace of the McLarens. We got a bit lucky with one retiring but, in general, to be on the podium here is a great result. Second is a really good achievement for us.”
Meanwhile, Racing Bulls rookie Isack Hadjar built on an excellent qualifying, which put him fourth on the grid. He held that position in the race, before moving up to the podium when Norris retired.
“It’s a bit unreal,” said Hadjar. “What was most surprising to me was keeping that fourth place for the whole race.
“Unfortunate for Lando but we took advantage,” he continued. “The car was on rails the whole weekend and I was really happy with my start because I really maximized what I had, made no mistakes and brought home the podium. I’m so happy for my team.”
Zandvoort looked to be another weekend to forget for Canadian Lance Stroll, who started 19th after crashing in qualifying. Stroll also went off in Friday practice and missed valuable running time.
Race day brought smiles as Stroll took advantage of the safety cars and a clever tire strategy to move up the order and ended the day seventh, after Antonelli dropped from sixth to 16th due to a penalty. On top of that, his teammate Fernando Alonso ended the day eighth, giving the team a second-consecutive double points finish.
“We’re happy we were able to finish with both cars in the points,” said Stroll. “We managed to make up a lot of positions early on in the race with the right strategy calls and an early pit stop after the first stint.
“A shout-out to the team for rebuilding the car Friday night and again on Saturday after the off in qualifying – it was a frustrating weekend up to that point,” he continued. “It felt great to bounce back in the race.”
