It’s the home race for Max Verstappen, who has won there three times but was beaten by McLaren’s Lando Norris last year

F1’s summer beach trip sees it race near the sand dunes at Zandvoort on the Netherlands’ North Sea coast. It’s the home race for Max Verstappen, who has won there three times but was beaten by McLaren’s Lando Norris last year.

Zandvoort was a regular on the F1 calendar from the 1950s through to the mid-1980s, but the 1985 edition was the last until a return in 2021 as Verstappen became one of F1’s biggest names. The Dutch race is dropping off the F1 calendar after next year.

Lando Norris had been fastest all through practice but had to settle for second on the grid after losing out to his McLaren teammate and title rival Oscar Piastri by barely one-hundredth of a second. Max Verstappen starts his home race third for Red Bull after struggling with his car, while Isack Hadjar qualified a career-best fourth for Racing Bulls.

Norris held on for the win at the Hungarian Grand Prix by less than a second as teammate Oscar Piastri chased him down in the final laps. Norris had the edge thanks to a smart pit strategy but the downside was that he had to cling on with worn tires. George Russell was third for Mercedes. Piastri leads Norris by nine points in the season driver standings.

Key stats

0.012 — The margin between Piastri and Norris in qualifying was just .012 of a second.

5 — McLaren has finished 1-2 in four consecutive races. A fifth 1-2 finish would match the F1 record, shared by Ferrari and Mercedes.

18.5 — After his fourth-place finish in Hungary, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc has started on pole in 27 races but won only five of those, or 18.5%. He has won three races where he didn’t start on pole.

1.9 — McLaren set a new benchmark for fastest pit stop of the year with 1.9 seconds for Norris in Hungary.