Max Verstappen has beaten Lewis Hamilton to victory at the first Dutch Grand Prix in 26 years to regain the title lead.
The Dutchman had a blistering start from pole position while the two Mercedes drivers briefly sparred into the first turn. By the end of the first lap his lead was up to 1.7 seconds over Hamilton, and he added an extra two seconds to that by lap 20.
Mercedes, sensing its window of opportunity closing, brought Hamilton into the pits for the undercut, but Verstappen stopped the following lap to maintain his advantage, albeit reduced by two seconds.
But Mercedes’s potential ace was Valtteri Bottas, who had been left on track to inherit the lead. The team hoped he could sandwich Verstappen between himself and the tailing Hamilton to generate an opportunity for the Briton to pass on a circuit that otherwise made overtaking difficult.
Verstappen closed on the Finn on lap 29, but the battle didn’t last long. Bottas’s worn tyres forced him into a mistake on lap 30, allowing the Dutchman and Hamilton to sail through out of the last corner of that lap.
Hamilton had one final card to play, making his second stop aggressively early and onto the medium-compound tyre when Verstappen had only the slower hards remaining, but the stop was badly timed. Hamilton rejoined the circuit among lapped traffic, squandering any first-mover advantage, and Verstappen’s car turned out to have strong pace on the hard tyre anyway,
Strategic options exhausted, Mercedes waited until Hamilton’s tyres expired late in the race before bringing him back to the pits for the qualifying tyre to allow him to score a consolation point for fastest lap.
Verstappen had seen off Mercedes’s full armoury without breaking a sweat, and he took the flag to thunderous applause from the 70,000-strong Dutch crowd.
“As you can hear already, it’s just incredible,” he said. “Of course the expectations were very high going into the weekend, and it’s never easy to fulfil that, but I’m of course so happy to win here and take the lead as well in the championship.
“It’s just an amazing day. The whole crowd — incredible.”
Hamilton tried to cling to Verstappen, keeping the Red Bull Racing car just in his sights for much of the race, but he never had the pace to close, and the Briton admitted Mercedes simply lacked performance to take the fight to the leader.
“Max did a great job,” he said. “I gave it absolutely everything today — flat out.
“I pushed as hard as I could, but they were just too quick for us.”
Bottas was an anonymous third, fading from the lead fight after being passed by Verstappen and Hamilton early, and his day was compounded by a late safety stop and instruction not to try to set the fastest lap to ensure his teammate could add the point to his championship campaign.
“Unfortunately for me it was pretty uneventful,” he said. “We tried, but we didn’t quite have the pace today.” … Continue reading
Max Verstappen scored an emphatic victory at his home Dutch Grand Prix to retake the world championship lead from second-placed Lewis Hamilton.
The Dutchman’s triumph was never in doubt despite several Mercedes attempts to challenge his grasp on the lead at the pit stops. Hamilton attempted to keep up with the race’s blistering pace with an alternative tire strategy, but his rubber inevitably faded late, allowing the home hero to cruise to a comfortable win.
A perfect start was his foundation, getting away cleanly to control the racing line into the first turn. The second phase of Hamilton’s launch was slower, dropping him into the clutches of teammate Valtteri Bottas.
Continue reading on RACERSunday at the Dutch Grand Prix is set up with the stuff of Formula 1 dreams: the two title protagonists sharing the front row with cars of differing strengths around a roller-coaster of a classic circuit before throngs of passionate fans.
Max Verstappen has pipped championship rival Lewis Hamilton to pole position for the Dutch Grand Prix in a thrilling finish to qualifying.
Max Verstappen snatched pole for the first Dutch Grand Prix in 36 years by less than a tenth of a second from title rival Lewis Hamilton in a tense qualifying finish at Zandvoort.
Verstappen looked comfortably in control atop the standings for the first two segments of qualifying and after the first laps of the pole shootout held a three-tenths margin over both Mercedes drivers. So good was the Dutchman’s lap that he could squeeze only 0.038s of improvement with his second attempt.
Hamilton, on the other hand, had left plenty on the table to gain with his second attempt, correcting several snaps of oversteer in the key traction zones to run Verstappen close.
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Max Verstappen made a claim to pole favorite for the Dutch Grand Prix with the fastest time of final practice at Zandvoort, comfortably ahead of both Mercedes drivers.
The Dutchman was quickest in every sector to set a time of 1m09.623s, gaining a little time thanks to a slipstream from teammate Sergio Perez out of the final banked corner.
Valtteri Bottas was next best, but the Finn was 0.556s adrift of Red Bull Racing’s benchmark, with Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton a further 0.2s behind.
Continue reading on RACERFerrari teammates Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz topped a twice-suspended second free practice session at the Dutch Grand Prix from which Lewis Hamilton withdrew early with engine problems.
Leclerc topped the time sheet with a lap of 1m10.902s, beating Sainz by 0.194s. Home favorite Max Verstappen was fifth, the Red Bull driver having lost his best time to one of the session’s two red flags.
Hamilton was the cause of the first, the championship leader having completed just three laps when his Mercedes’ power unit gave up the ghost. The Briton eased off the power through the first turn and cruised through to Turn 8, where he was instructed to park the car and switch off the motor.
Continue reading on RACERLewis Hamilton snatched top spot from home hero Max Verstappen by less than a tenth of a second in F1’s first timed session at Zandvoort for the Dutch Grand Prix.
The Briton set his best time, a 1m11.500s, late in the hour after most of the session was lost to a protracted stopped to recover Sebastian Vettel’s broken Aston Martin car.
Vettel had reported an MGU-K problem on his first foray around the track and promptly returned to pit lane for a check-up, but when he was deployed to the circuit little more than 10 minutes later his car lasted barely another lap before its Mercedes power unit failed on the start-finish straight, trailing fluid before griding to a halt at pit exit.
Continue reading on RACERJust eight points separate Max Verstappen from title leader Lewis Hamilton as F1 returns from the summer break with a tricky trio of tracks. Featuring Autosport’s Luke Smith and Motorbox’s Luca Manacorda.