2024-08-25 23:20:02
Lando Norris secured his second Formula 1 victory with a dominant performance at the Dutch Grand Prix to beat Max Verstappen at his home race.
Despite losing the lead into the first corner, Norris recovered from that to pass Verstappen and immediately started to build a break over the Red Bull to ensure he had a considerable cushion in hand over the Dutchman – crossing the line with a 22.9-second lead. This ensured that, with the fastest lap, Norris managed to reduce Verstappen’s championship lead to 70 points.
“It feels amazing, once again I wouldn’t say a perfect race because of lap 1 again, but after that it was beautiful,” Norris said. “The pace was very strong, the car was unbelievable and I could get comfortable, push, and pass Max.
“I think from quite early on, actually, from pretty much lap 5-6-7, I expected Max to start pushing and get a bit of a gap, and he never did. So from that point, I knew we’re in with a good fight, but he seemed to just keep dropping off. And my pace was getting better.”
The pressure had been on Norris to preserve the lead into the first corner, having been unable to do so from pole at both Barcelona and Hungary, but the McLaren driver ended up gathering too much wheelspin into the first corner and lost ground to Verstappen into Turn 1.
Verstappen then proceeded to shatter any hopes of a DRS fightback by immediately putting over a second on Norris, which grew to 1.5s over the next few laps to keep Norris at bay.
However, the Red Bull driver was unable to extend his lead any further, as Norris gamely hung on just outside of the DRS margin and Verstappen struggled with turn-in on the slower corners. After the opening 15 laps, Norris then snapped out of his early management to close in on Verstappen, although his attempt with DRS into Turn 1 at the start of lap 17 was evaded.
His assault on the subsequent lap was not, however, and proceeded to gather a huge amount of momentum through the banked Turn 14 to cruise past Verstappen down the inside.
Soon after, Norris shook Verstappen off and started to gap his championship rival by a rate of over half a second per lap. Although Verstappen pitted a lap earlier amid their sole stops for fresh tyres, Norris retained plenty of gap in hand and disappeared down the road in a crushing – and Verstappen-like – display of dominance.
Charles Leclerc completed the top three after shrugging off a lengthy spell of pressure from Oscar Piastri, having undercut the Australian and George Russell during the pitstops.
The Monegasque swiftly dealt with traffic around him after his stop to ensure he broke free of Russell and, despite Piastri’s best efforts, Leclerc retained enough top speed into Turn 1 to keep Piastri at bay.
Piastri had gone longer into the race to claim a nine-lap offset on the hard tyre for the second phase; although he caught and passed Russell with relative ease, Leclerc proved a much tougher nut to crack.
Carlos Sainz recovered from his Q2 exit to finish fifth with a series of well-judged overtakes, crucially putting a move on Sergio Perez despite the Mexican’s robust defence to move up to sixth.
This was set to become fifth as he caught Russell, but the Briton pitted for a soft-tyre gamble towards the end of the race. This did not entirely work out, as Russell ran out of time – and, in reality, lacked the pace – to catch Perez to lose track position.
Lewis Hamilton also put in a solid recovery drive to collect eighth, after also dropping out in Q2 and taking a grid penalty for impeding Perez. Pierre Gasly and Fernando Alonso completed the top 10, the latter relegating Nico Hulkenberg from the points.
