Sport e Salute

Norris Wins Zandvoort's Farewell Race Ahead of Antonelli and Russell

24 Agosto 2026

A cura di Redazione

A crash on the first lap ended Verstappen's home race in seconds. Neither Ferrari car reached the podium, so Ferrari's fans are now looking to Monza for better results.

Lando Norris won the Dutch Grand Prix on Sunday at Circuit Zandvoort. It was the track’s last Formula 1 race before it drops off the calendar in 2027. Kimi Antonelli finished second, George Russell third, and Mercedes took the other two podium places. For much of the afternoon, though, it looked like someone else might win.

One lap. That was all it took to end Max Verstappen’s home race. The Red Bull driver lost the back of his car on the banked final corner, still wet from rain that had fallen before the start, and hit the barrier hard enough to tear off a wheel. Red flags came out straight away. Verstappen climbed out of the car on his own and radioed that he was fine, the field went back to a standing start after a formation lap. His afternoon in front of his own fans was over almost before it began, and there wasn’t much he could do about it now except watch from the garage.

Antonelli made a clean restart and quickly pulled away from Norris, who had started from pole position. Within a few laps he had built a gap of about a second and a half. Under this year’s rules, that kind of lead counts for more than it used to. The 2026 cars are lighter, they have movable aerodynamic parts, and they get much more of their power from batteries than last year’s cars did, which is part of why a good restart matters so much more than it used to — get it right, manage the throttle and the energy well, don’t push the tires too hard while they’re still cold on a damp track, and the reward can be big. Still, Norris needed almost fifty laps to close the gap. He worked his way through the pit stops, caught Antonelli, then Hamilton, and finally took the lead for good on lap 55. It was his second win in a row after Hungary, and his thirteenth win in Formula 1. Afterward, he called it “probably one of my better wins,” adding: “We had to fight for it, but the pace was strong all weekend.”

There was one more twist near the end. With ten laps left, Esteban Ocon stopped his Haas at the side of the track, and this brought out a virtual safety car. Mercedes reacted by giving Antonelli a pit stop for fresh soft tires. Russell stayed out on his older tires, which for a short time put him ahead. But a couple of laps later, Mercedes told Russell to let his teammate Antonelli pass again, so Antonelli could keep second place. Russell, who had defended hard all afternoon and at times held off both Ferraris by less than a second, accepted the team’s decision without complaint, in public at least, and finished third. It looked like a call made to help Mercedes in the championship, not one made with much thought for how it would look to the fans.

For Ferrari, and for many readers of this newspaper who judge their weekend by how the red cars perform, there wasn’t much to celebrate. Charles Leclerc ran as high as third before dropping back to fifth at the finish, seventeen seconds behind the winner. He just couldn’t make his tires last the way Norris did in the final part of the race. Lewis Hamilton briefly led during the pit-stop period and finished fourth. Later, he seemed unhappy about the timing of his teammate’s stop and what it might have cost him. Neither Ferrari car reached the podium. And Mercedes scored eleven more points than Ferrari on the day alone — ground the team will now have to make up somewhere else. Ferrari leaves the Netherlands having lost ground, not gained it.

Audi made more small progress. Nico Hülkenberg brought his car home eighth, a solid, if not spectacular, result. His teammate Gabriel Bortoleto spun early on, recovered, and finished a distant thirteenth; he then spent part of the evening under investigation for jumping a red light at the pit exit. Nobody at Audi is talking about podiums yet. But on a day like this one, eighth place still counts for something.

None of this made Verstappen’s day any easier to accept. He had arrived at Zandvoort fresh off the news that he had extended his contract with Red Bull until 2030. Formula 1’s chief executive, Stefano Domenicali, called this deal “the icing on the cake” of the week, adding that he “cannot imagine Formula 1” without the four-time champion. But the car he had this weekend gave him little to work with. Red Bull struggled for pace through Saturday’s sprint, and that continued into Sunday. Verstappen made no attempt to hide his disappointment: “This weekend, of course, was disappointing,” he said, “a disappointing pace and a disappointing end to the weekend.”

Mercedes heads out of Zandvoort with both cars in the top three of the drivers’ championship and a strong lead at the top of the constructors’ table. Every other team is now chasing that position, and chasing hard. Ferrari’s problem is a newer one. According to team principal Fred Vasseur, Hamilton and Leclerc had gone through the season’s first eleven races without any real conflict on track, so Sunday’s dispute over pit-stop timing was new territory for them. It remains to be seen whether it stays a one-off. Red Bull’s points on Sunday came from Lawson, not from Verstappen, a reminder that the team has more than one driver capable of scoring points on days when Verstappen himself doesn’t finish. Audi, for its part, added another eighth-place finish to its tally. In two weeks the series moves on to Monza, where Ferrari’s fans will be watching even more closely than they did on Sunday.