“Backyard Beatings.”
Welcome back to another edition of Dre’s Race Review and this time we’re looking at the 2024 Dutch Grand Prix, and well, yikes. If there was any confusion left about the state of the current field as F1 enters its final 10-race run-in for the year, then Lando Norris just made it abundantly clear. Both Championships are in the hands of the Papaya. Let’s talk about how.
A Different Shade of Orange
A quick throwback to a race that was only 13 months ago. The 2023 Hungarian Grand Prix was the last one of those true “flashpoint” races that laid out the state of the field. Lewis Hamilton is a Hungary specialist, one of his strongest tracks. Narrowly beat Verstappen to pole by less than a hundredth of a second. His lead lasted all of about 400 yards before Max took the lead at Turn 1 and went on to win by 33.7 seconds, his most dominant win of all. Any talk of Red Bull vulnerability was eradicated right there and then.
Lando Norris went into Sunday at Zandvoort holding all the aces. McLaren riding the hot hand after good showings in terms of pace, even if the results sheet didn’t quite reflect that. He comfortably took the pole position by a third of a second, his long run pace on Friday looked solid too. And Zandvoort is a pretty predictable venue – A one-stopper was the order of the day here, as even on new rubber you weren’t making up a 20-22 second deficit, so keep the lead and you win if you can protect the undercut.
…And then Lando loses the lead off the line. Again. The one narrative around him is that people want to give him, lands again. Lando’s started a race in P1 six times in his career, and he’s now 0-6 for leading the opening lap afterwards. Max led pretty comfortably for the first 15 laps of this race and I was there thinking that the undercut might be the only way Lando wins this from there.
So Lando blows past Max into Turn 1 and never looked back about three laps later. Who needs strategy when you can just drive past them with ease?
Lando Norris would go on to win this race by 22 seconds, the largest margin of victory in the sport since Verstappen’s Hungarian win last year. And it showed. Once Norris got in front, there was nothing Max could do. He was playing for second place, and I fear this could be a continued pattern going forward.
This was McLaren’s big upgrade weekend, their first since Miami. New Brake Scoop, Suspension, and upgrades to the floor and corner. They seemed to work straight away and not take away anything from the drivability of the car. Meanwhile, Red Bull’s situation gets bleaker. They’re re-testing older spec parts. There’s an admittance it may have lost some direction in its upgrade path and it may have taken the development of the brilliant RB19 last year as far as it can go. They’re struggling in low-speed corners and over kerbs, and Max likes his car to oversteer, but the RB20 is understeering to such an extreme that even he can’t handle it out there. It’s the most vulnerable Red Bull has been since the end of 2021 when Mercedes were breathing down their necks, and it could be about to happen again.
I think the Constructor’s Championship is lost. Sergio Perez has never been able to back up Verstappen consistently like Oscar should be able to for Lando. The gap is down to 31, McLaren has the faster car right now and there are still nine races left. The Driver’s title… could be interesting.
The gap’s down to 70 points after Lando took the fastest lap. If Lando wins out, including the Sprints and takes those Fastest Lap points too, assuming Verstappen finishes second every time, Lando wins the title by 5 points. Now do I think that’ll happen? No. Red Bull had one of the best operational seasons we’ve ever seen last year and even they struggled to have their talismanic driver win as many as ten straight.
And that’s been where McLaren’s left points on the table, even in their current guise. Oscar Piastri was a walking case study on it this weekend, losing out to Charles Leclerc on an undercut after being out-qualified by his teammate by half a second. If your winning car is dominant to the point where it can beat Max by 22 seconds, you need to be finishing 1-2, not 1-4.
Red Bull still needs to be careful, but it’s going to be a big ask for Lando to reel in 70 points in nine races unless Max takes a DNF. But if he does, it’s going to open the door for McLaren to potentially double up. A shame the action on track didn’t reflect it, but in terms of the driver’s battle, the run-in is very delicately poised right now. Whether it continues that way, remains to be seen.
An F1 Academy Update
…I’m starting to lose patience with the F1 Academy. They had their biggest chance yet to stand out given it was the only major support series here for F1 besides the usual Porsches, and Zandvoort’s double dip of Sunday morning races was drab. Pulling comfortably won Race 1, Pin Grand Slammed Race 2, and passing was virtually impossible. These F4 cars lack power at just 160 horsepower as is, giving them a huge rear wing that eliminated Slipstreaming at ZANDVOORT (Y’know, the track with a running start via an 18-degree bank), which made the race excruciating. Wildcard Nina Gademan tried a lunge in the final sector clattered Auerlia Nobels into the gravel, and got a 10-second time penalty. It’s a perfectly valid call, but when these cars can’t pass, I sympathise with the drivers for taking extreme risks.
On the track, the formbook has 100% held up. Abbi Pulling, who’s been driving F4 cars since 2020, is almost certainly going to win the Championship comfortably. Doriane Pin, already races in what was last year’s prize – FRECA, as she has greater aspirations for her single-seater journey and I think she’s just using the academy series for name recognition and seat time. Those two are comfortably better than anyone else here, even with the good flashes from Maya Weug, Chloe Chambers and Lia Block.
The commentary box is frustrating. Again, I sympathise as someone who has done some play-by-play commentary, that shit is mad hard, but the overall vibe it gives off is still: “Women! Isn’t that great?!”, and it comes off almost as patronising as it does endorse them.
And I get it, you have to hammer the sponsor talk home. This is a junior series, it’s losing money out of the arse just for it to exist. You have to sell the series as hard as you can, and to Susie Wolff’s credit, she’s done a superb job of bringing unique sponsors like QVC, American Express and Charlotte Tilbury into the fold. But bringing in The Female Quotient and having more roundtable discussions about what we can do to “grow the game” feels redundant when we all already know deep down what the secret sauce is.
If you’re not prepared to lose tens of millions of dollars on this, you will not have the impact you want. The F1 Academy is still too high up the ladder, but it’s as low as you can make a junior series that is still justified in TV/Streaming footage. You need much, MUCH deeper investments in grassroots karting, schools and clubs to educate this generation of young girls that Motorsport is a genuinely viable career path and not just “toys for the boys”. I know the Academy is doing this in collab with the FIA via programmes like “Girls On Track”, but I think the scaling needs to be ramped up, otherwise we’re just going to have these same conversations every time while waiting for a golden unicorn figure like Danica Patrick that right now, doesn’t exist.
I want to support the Academy and I know its intentions are good, but I still have my doubts that this is the way to do it.
The Lightning Round
Charles Leclerc drove a superb race. That Ferrari has been nowhere for weeks now and his pace was strong, he undercut Piastri when the chance came, got in front and then held him off for back-to-back podiums. I don’t care what side of the fence you’re on with Ferrari, that man can drive.
Very odd to see Mercedes, the hot team going into the second half, struggle so much. Russell couldn’t stay with the pace of Norris and Verstappen and the team struggled on the Hard compound tire, forcing themselves into a two-stop strategy. The bottom of the big-hitting teams here is a bucket of water for a team that was on fire.
Sergio Perez… wasn’t cheeks this weekend. It’s only fair to mention that finishing within a stop of Max on the road and only .4 off in qualifying is largely fine, even more so now it’s clear Red Bull doesn’t have a dominant car anymore. Let’s see if this continues.
Williams had an awful weekend. Logan Sargeant pinned it with two wheels in the grass in FP3, wrecking his car and forcing him to miss qualifying, and then their big new floor upgrade was found to be too wide in post-qualifying scrutineering and was DQ’ed from the session. I think the chat of Logan being replaced mid-season is a little strong (I’ve seen far worse out there), but on any level, another weekend to forget for a team writing a lot of cheques it currently can’t cash.
Really solid work from Pierre Gasly who won the F1.5 battle outside of the Top 8 by driving around the Haas cars and winding in a 10-second deficit to Nico Hulkenberg in the second phase of the race. Had the measure of Ocon all weekend too. Solid debut weekend for Oliver Oakes in the saddle, even if Flavio’s doing him no favours by saying podiums should be the target by 2027. Because what to do when two infamous five-year plans backfire is to put out a third in half the timespan.
F1 claiming a 305,000-weekend attendance isn’t bad, but I know the internal feeling wasn’t great with tickets still available at the door on Saturday with prices jacked up 100% on last year. Not ideal to have that under-the-surface rumbling when there are rumours this race might become rotational come 2026…
And finally, shoutout to Robbie Williams (Yes, that Robbie), really nice work on the trophies and their message about the sacrifices made to be an F1 driver. Some of the best of 2024.
Dre’s Race Rating – 4/10 (Meh): Remember folks, the domination doesn’t get any more interesting when someone in Orange is doing it instead. This was a nothing-burger of a race. Norris was dominant and once he got to the front, was untouchable. There was no strategic intrigue or battles on track for long periods beyond that, and the back half of the race was a cure for insomnia. Stick to the YouTube highlights, and I’ll see you in Monza next week.
