Five winners, five losers: Dutch Grand Prix
- Peter Johnson
- 6 hours ago
- 8 min read
Written by Peter Johnson, Edited by Meghana Sree
Formula One returned from its summer break with a chaotic Dutch Grand Prix, which featured career highs for some and potentially season-defining lows for others.
Winner - Oscar Piastri
The Dutch Grand Prix weekend could quite simply not have unfolded any better for Oscar Piastri.
The championship leader was not necessarily on the pace of teammate Lando Norris on Friday, but as we have come to see from the steely Australian, he gradually found speed over the weekend and snatched pole from his rival on Saturday.
Come Sunday, and Piastri had the race as good as won once he made a clean start. While Norris was delayed behind Max Verstappen in the opening stint, Piastri pulled a gap and controlled the race from the front, repeating the feat after each of the multiple Safety Car restarts.
Norris’ retirement is in one sense almost a shame for Piastri, as it may distract from just how faultless his weekend actually was. In taking pole, leading every lap, claiming the fastest lap and winning the race, the Australian achieved the first Grand Slam of his career.
In putting another 25 points into Norris, the championship leader is now over a full race victory clear in the standings.
With 17 of the previous 34 winners at Zandvoort having gone on to win the title, you would have to see that the chances of that figure becoming 18 from 35 are now rather large.
Winner - Isack Hadjar
What a truly phenomenal journey Isack Hadjar has had in 2025. From burying his car in the barriers on the formation lap in Australia to standing atop the podium at Zandvoort, the young Frenchman has experienced a sensational rise.
Dubbed “Le Petit Prost” since his junior days, Hadjar qualified an astounding fourth on Saturday, although his team rated his chances of staying there as slim.
Racing Bulls needn’t have worried, though, because Hadjar was flawless on race day. He kept George Russell and Charles Leclerc at bay with apparent ease, and was even briefly threatening Verstappen for third after the first Safety Car restart.
Yes, he inherited third place through Norris’ retirement, but it is impossible to begrudge Hadjar such a result after his performances this season. Now in the top 10 of the Drivers’ Championship, the 20-year-old Parisian has dragged his team to within two points of Aston Martin for sixth place in the constructors’ standings and is surely favourite for the second Red Bull seat next season.
From crying onto Anthony Hamilton’s shoulder in Melbourne, to lifting (and subsequently breaking) a trophy 14 races later, it has been quite the turnaround.
Winner - Alex Albon
It was certainly a weekend to celebrate for one half of the Williams garage, as Alex Albon leapt ten places from 15th to fifth to score 10 points for the Grove-based team.
Making up five places in the opening stages, Albon continued to pick up positions as one of the main beneficiaries from the multiple incidents near the front.
After a lightning start to the season, Williams looked nailed on for fifth place in the Constructors’ Championship but have faltered in recent races.
Albon’s chunk of points in the Netherlands has afforded the team some extra breathing space after Aston Martin, Racing Bulls and Haas all scored well.
Winner - Haas
In a weekend of impressive drives from the back of the field, few did it better than the boys from Haas. Oliver Bearman converted a pitlane start to the best result of his career (and first points since Bahrain) with P6, while Esteban Ocon snuck into the top 10 having started down in 18th.
Haas firmly committed to a one-stop strategy on both cars, with both drivers starting on the hard compound and going long. Neither blinked under the first safety car or virtual safety car, with Ocon making his only stop as Leclerc and Kimi Antonelli collided, while Bearman made his sole tyre change under the ensuing Safety Car.
On fresher tyres than their rivals, the pair set off in pursuit of points, crossing the line in seventh and 11th before Antonelli’s 15 seconds of penalties were applied.
Having scored two double points finishes in the first four rounds, this was the first time both Bearman and Ocon finished in the top 10 since Bahrain. They still have some ground to make up to catch Sauber in the championship, but Haas are still in this midfield fight.
Winner - Lance Stroll
Credit where credit is due - with crashes in both practice and qualifying, starting 19th on the grid and colliding with Gabriel Bortoleto, it did not seem likely that Lance Stroll would be coming away with points from Zandvoort.
Making limited inroads through the field in the opening stint, Stroll pitted 10 laps earlier than anybody else on Lap 8 following his collision with the Sauber.
The Canadian then put the hammer down, closing up to the back of the pack and making one further stop under the post-Antonelli and Leclerc collision safety car.
It was a strategic masterstroke from Stroll’s side of the garage, as teammate Fernando Alonso was again left to lament traffic and an unfortunately-timed safety car.
With three seventh-placed finishes in four races moving him clear of the Spaniard in the World Championship, Stroll is becoming a reliable source of points for Aston.
Loser - Lando Norris
In a season where even second-placed finishes are a disappointment for Norris, a retirement is an absolute gut punch.
The Briton, who was in red-hot form prior to the summer break, set out in a similar vein in the Netherlands, topping each of the three practice sessions.
Ultimately, missing out on pole proved inconsequential and paled into insignificance on Lap 64 as an oil leak forced the Briton out of the race.
The smell of smoke Norris reported in the cockpit may also end up being the scent of a young man’s evaporating title chances, as he fell to 34 points behind his teammate and title rival.
The only possible positive to take from such a situation is that at least Norris was not denied a race victory by the incident, in the way that Lewis Hamilton was in Malaysia in 2016, for example.
With a guaranteed second place gone up in smoke at Zandvoort, one can only hope that whatever the result of this year’s championship, Norris is not within 18 points of Piastri come the end of the season.
Loser - Ferrari
From the bitter disappointment with which Ferrari entered the summer break, there was an air of positivity about the Scuderia in the early knockings of the weekend at Zandvoort.
Hamilton in particular, who had said there would be “tears” during the recess, spoke of a changed approach, which materialised on the track with him appearing fractionally quicker than Leclerc.
Come qualifying, Leclerc edged out his teammate, with the two Ferraris lying astern in sixth and seventh. Leclerc made an early move on Russell for fifth, but after that progress was limited.
Then things started to go wrong – very wrong.
On Lap 22, on a dampening track, Hamilton encountered a snap of oversteer at Turn 3 and was unable to avoid the barriers. That was his race run.
On Lap 52, and not before a second gutsy overtake of the afternoon on Russell, Leclerc came a cropper courtesy of the sister Mercedes at the same corner.
Antonelli received a ten-second penalty for his troubles, while the images of Leclerc spectating atop a sand dune will accompany him for the rest of his career.
As if a double DNF weren’t enough, Hamilton was later hit with a five-place grid penalty for speeding under yellow flags during his warm-up lap, which he will take at Ferrari’s home race in Monza.
While neither car nor strategy was responsible for either driver’s retirement, it was another horror story for the Scuderia.
Loser - Kimi Antonelli
These are concerning times for Antonelli. The young Italian has collected just 16 points over the last nine races, and 15 of those are accounted for by his podium in Canada.
Following a Q2 elimination on Saturday, he was running a fairly strong race, overtaking Albon and Russell to run sixth at the mid-way stage.
Then came his tangle with Leclerc, following an overly ambitious move up the inside of Turn 3. A ten-second penalty was duly applied, before he incurred a further five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane.
Despite crossing the line in sixth, Antonelli ultimately finished 16th. “I tried”, he told engineer Peter Bonnington on the radio, with “That’s all we ask for, Kimi”, the reply. It is fair to say he is being afforded far more patience than he may have had the luxury of at other top teams, and with his recent string of results it remains to be seen how far that patience will go.
Loser - Carlos Sainz
Carlos Sainz has hardly had the rub of the green this year, has he? The Williams man looked set for at least a couple of points, and maybe even his highest finish of the year, until his collision with Liam Lawson at the safety car restart on Lap 27.
The Spaniard attempted to pass his rival around the outside at Turn 1, before being squeezed off the road, suffering a puncture and dropping to the back of the field.
To compound matters, to the shock of pretty much everyone, the stewards judged him to be at fault and hit him with a ten-second penalty.
An understandably confused Sainz was keen for an explanation from the stewards after the race, who may well point to the fact that he was not fully alongside Lawson, a requirement under the current regulations if you are attempting to overtake around the outside.
With just four points in the last 10 weekends, it is a fairly barren run for Sainz, although both car and driver showed speed at Zandvoort, which bodes well for future races.
Loser - Yuki Tsunoda
Relatively speaking, this was not a bad weekend for Yuki Tsunoda, who achieved his joint-best result for Red Bull with ninth place.
However, with Hadjar’s podium finish for Racing Bulls, not to mention generally good performances all season, Tsunoda’s future looks in grave danger. Aside from a possible return to the junior team, it is difficult to envisage a seat opening up for the Japanese driver next season.
A sudden upturn in results appears unlikely, and Tsunoda’s F1 future may well hang on Arvid Lindblad or another Red Bull junior not getting the nod for 2026.
Comments