Welcome back to another DRR Double Header, and after a month on holiday, Formula 1 is back for its final 10-race stretch to close out 2025. They come thick and fast, and to kick us off, we have the Dutch Grand Prix from Zandvoort, in its penultimate visit. And while the action was hardly riveting, it did give us some narrative and Championship flashpoints that I think we’ll be remembering by the time we get to December. Let’s talk about it.
Narratives of The Week
This was set up to be another razor tight weekend. The qualifying battle was always going to be huge between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and despite Norris looking the stronger driver across Friday and Saturday, Piastri’s banker run was 0.012 seconds quicker, and it was enough to take his first pole at Zandvoort and his fifth pole of the season.
Norris was unfortunate for the second race weekend in a row. He got a better launch from the right side of the grid, but could do nothing wrong it, having Max Verstappen on the soft tyre have the initial grip to take the natural line round the outside of the banking at Turn 1, and despite nearly spinning it at the Hugenholtz, Max was able to make second stick. And with it, Norris burned time and tires getting back around Max once his tire offset kicked in again. It was four seconds ahead of Piastri and Norris couldn’t do enough to really chip away at it…
…Until we got the first Safety Car for Lewis Hamilton, crashing at the same Hugenholtz after his best Daniel Ricciardo 2023 impression. It had already been a weird weekend coming off the break for LH. Thursday’s press conference felt more like a group therapy session with the amount of drivers in the paddock asked to comment on his downturn in form. In a sport built on the back of macho-performatism, it was genuinely strange seeing the sport rally around Lewis and how he’ll likely get it down. Don’t get it twisted, I’m not saying it was bad, just different, and a statement of the strange run of form Lewis has had. A lot of people are pulling for his success, and it just hasn’t really happened yet.
He was still beaten in Quali by Charles Leclerc but by only half a tenth, and was running right with his teammate and George Russell when out of nowhere he drifts wide and into the outside wall. A very un-Hamilton like mistake, and it brings forth another unfortunate stat: Ferrari’s all-time leader in races before a first podium, passing Ivan Capelli for 15 attempts and counting.
The Safety Car backed the wagon up and had everyone switch tires for what we thought was going to be 1-stop to the end, with Verstappen on the mediums to try an early counter-attack. Once again, it didn’t work, with McLaren comfortably easing away from Max once the best of his tires left the building. Norris again tried to get in Piastri’s DRS range, but as following through Sector 2 at Zandvoort is virtually impossible, it was a gap that stuck at around 1.3 seconds.
Until Lap 54. Charles Leclerc is in for the second stop in a 2-stop strategy, a plan thought some might take given Zandvoort’s pit-lane speed limit was upped to 80 kph from 60. He comes out of the pits just ahead of Antonelli, and sensing a chance to pass on fresh rubber, he tries for the underside line through Hugenholtz… but drifts into the outside line via misjudgement, clipping Leclerc’s Ferrari and putting him into that outside wall. Just like that, both Ferrari’s are out, and Antonelli gets 15 seconds of time penalties, 10 for the collision, 5 more for speeding in the pitlane. One of the big talking points off the off-season was Antonelli’s struggles after a strong start to the season.
Personally, I think a lot of Mercedes issues stems from two problem areas – inconsistency from their 2024 issues with managing tire temperature and being in the right performance window, with them being outside of that window causing them to lose pace, and dealing with the fact that Russell himself has been one of the best drivers in F1 this season, at least in my opinion. It’s really hard when you’re hyped up as a generational talent and then immediately chucked in at the deep end against an elite driver in the sport entering his prime. It’s the ultimate test, one that would be hard for anyone to deal with, even for a teenager with the world at his feet, and there are only so many times you can crash with spectacular speed before the gloss wears off.
I’ve seen more than enough of Kimi on track to tell he’ll be absolutely fine. Mercedes just needs to stop generating headlines, get behind their second driver, and just tell him to clean it up and enjoy his driving. This weekend won’t help but I don’t think there’s much to worry about on the whole.
Everyone ploughs in for a free pitstop, with Norris and Piastri on scrubbed hards to finish, Max on scrubbed softs. One more time, a Max attack was shutdown, and then, with 8 lap to go, Norris smells burning in his car, and seconds later, his car was dead with a power unit failure. And just like that, we have a huge, title shifting flashpoint.
Piastri would go onto score his first Grand Slam victory in Formula 1, flawless from start to finish. With Norris effectively losing 18 points, it’s now a 34 point gap between the pair with nine races and three Sprints to go. Now, I’d hardly call this a killshot, Norris had won three of the last four going into this weekend and clawed back his Canadian deficit from 22 to 9. But now he has to do it again, with less room for error. We don’t know what’s around the corner, but if McLaren keep locking out the 1-2’s, it means Norris’ most likely path to the World Title would be winning six out of the last nine. And with Piastri very evenly matched week-to-week, that could be difficult. Piastri just became an odds-on favourite for the title, and if Norris narrowly loses out, this will be the weekend I think that we’ll look back on in anger, ala Lewis Hamilton and Malaysia 2016.
Before we hit the Lightning Round, it’s only fair we share the other surprise member of the podium in third behind Max Verstappen – Isack Hadjar. Man, we’ve come such a long way from that opening weekend embarrassment in Melbourne and failing to start his debut race. I like many others feared due to the volatile nature of his team’s management, he could be one-and-done in a tough rookie field and Yuki Tsunoda established alongside. But the mental resilience of the young man has been remarkable*1.
And the Norris DNF was the only shenanigan involved. Hadjar was legitimately fourth on merit in Qualifying, held off usually quicker machinery behind him like Leclerc and Russell, refused to roll over, and took advantage of the opportunity to finish third. Hadjar said at the start of the season that his ultimate goal was a podium finish in 2025, and he has one, and it was a perfect weekend of execution. At the start of 2025, we were worried Hadjar might not finish the season. Now we’re concerned he might be too good not to get swept into the Red Bull senior driver picture. Man.
The Lightning Round
Formula 1’s inside media needs to work harder to figure out a clever way of promoting the McLaren title feud. Talking about wanting to see beef and a big fighting flashpoint feels lazy to me. Oscar Piastri is a calm, witty, diplomatic and stoic introverted driver and is a very chill character. He’s not going to give you spicy quotes about his teammate. Lando Norris is more mad at himself than anything Oscar’s ever done (Where they’re both largely very sensible), and he had a big beef with Max Verstappen last season on multiple occasions… and was fine, and always got along fine. The toxic standard teammate beef isn’t happening here.
Speaking of which on Sky Sports F1 -I finally figured him out. Jacques Villeneube is Nico Rosberg, but he’s let the intrusive thoughts win.
Great to see Laura Bowden, Chief Financial Officer at McLaren Racing collect the Constructor’s trophy. Just a bit sad it’s only the 12th time that’s ever happened in over 1,100 F1 races2.
George Russell made the claim going into the weekend that it was Kimi’s seat that was at risk for 2026, not his own when it came to the contract negotiations that has seemingly finally settled with #63 confirmed until 2026. I’ll give George this, he knows how to play the game very, very well. Remember, none of the Max talk for next season started until George talked about his own lack of contract in Austria.
The Carlos Sainz 10-second penalty for colliding with Liam Lawson is another example of everything wrong with the state of racecraft in 2025. The banked nature of Turn 1 made it to me, fair game, that Sainz try around the outside, but remember – Because of the new rules, Sainz needed to be at Wing Mirror level before being entitled to space. This makes outside passes virtually impossible unless the attacking car takes an almighty amount of risk. By the book, the stewards were right to give him the penalty. The problem is, the book itself is nonsense. And the fact Sainz complained on the rules he helped co-sign is another way of saying the inmates run the asylum.
As I write this, Lewis Hamilton got dinged 5-grid places for Monza for failing to slow down enough in double-waved yellows. When it rains, man…
Alex Albon had the quietest +10 places, 15th to 5th drive you’ll see all season. Gives Williams a critical 18 point buffer over Aston Martin in the battle for 5th in the Constructors, with Racing Bulls now just 2 points behind them in 7th. That F1.5 battle is going to be amazing.
I’ll give the Dutch this – Sick tifo, and amazing that 305,000 turned up over the weekend. Almost a shame a clearly popular round is going next year. Messy one.
The Verdict: 5/10 (Meh) – Was this a good race? No. It had the classic Zandvoort nature of it being nearly impossible to pass and F1 cars being too big to pass around it. But was it a dramatic race? For sure, and that deserves some points. Not many, but here we are. See you at Monza.
- I’ll be real, I feel dirty praising Hadjar for this because being “strong” when dealing with adversity from a mental health standpoint is probably a little unfair because there should empathy if you feel like you can’t overcome these things, but I think you get the point here. I hope. ↩︎
- Credit to Females in Motorsport for that one. ↩︎
