Formula 1 Race Review - Dutch Grand Prix
Credit: Peter Dejong/AP Photo
Sunday’s Formula One Dutch Grand Prix was almost as wild as the fans in the grandstands were. Over 300,000 spectators packed the Zandvoort circuit, many of them devoted supporters of home hero, Max Verstappen. The defending world champion lined up on pole position to start the race, with five different teams being represented in the five grid spots behind him. We appeared to be in store for another dominant Verstappen victory, but Mother Nature had other plans.
As the start time grew nearer and nearer, the paddock began to buzz with talks of inclement weather on the way. Dark clouds loomed in the distance, and by the time the formation lap was underway, rain was already beginning to spit down on the high-banks of the racetrack. As the lights went out, Verstappen held off Lando Norris into turn one to maintain the lead, and soon after Fernando Alonso found his way past George Russell and Carlos Sainz to advance himself into a podium position. All throughout the field, drivers were slipping and sliding around trying to maintain grip on a track that was rapidly taking on water. Some teams took advantage of this by pitting their drivers for wet-weather tires at the end of lap one, most notably Red Bull with Sergio Perez. After starting the event in a disappointing seventh place, the Mexican immediately began flying on intermediates, and caught up to the back of the field in just half a lap.
The front runners saw this, and quickly reacted. Verstappen and Alonso pitted for intermediate tires themselves, but when they emerged from the pitlane, they found themselves stuck in the midfield behind the likes of Perez, Zhou Guanyu, Charles Leclerc, and Pierre Gasly, all of whom had boxed a lap earlier. The two world champions put their heads down and fought through the slower cars, but when all was said and done, Verstappen had a 13 second deficit to his teammate out front. Meanwhile, drivers like Lando Norris and George Russell stayed out on slick tires for far too long, and were dropped far down the order by the time they finally fitted the intermediates on.
Just as quickly as the rain arrived, it disappeared. The circuit soon dried up, and forced drivers to make a second early pit stop in order to get slick tires back on again. The only exception to this was Alex Albon in the Williams, who had never stopped for wet tires in the first place. He had braved out the wet conditions on slicks, and while he had lost boatloads of time doing so, he was able to gain most of it back by way of not pitting even once in the opening laps. He slipped back to eighth from his fourth place starting spot, but it wasn’t a disastrous strategy for Albon. Meanwhile, everyone around him was trying to get onto slick tires as soon as possible, including Max Verstappen, who had made up almost ten seconds on Perez in just a handful of laps. Christian Horner and the Red Bull pit wall made the decision to pit the Dutchman a lap before his teammate, resulting in the two-time world champion emerging with the lead of the race thanks to a one lap undercut. Perez was clearly a bit baffled by the call, but in all fairness to the team, it regained Verstappen the lead that he had only lost because of a strategy call that went in Perez’s favor at the start of the race.
Shortly after dry tires had been fitted onto all 20 runners, Logan Sargeant lost control of his Williams in a high speed corner, and flew off into the barriers. This shunt brought out a safety car, and left the American stranded by the side of the track for much of the remainder of the race. Sargeant was visibly frustrated with the crash, as it was the second time in as many days that he had destroyed his car. As the wreck was cleared up, the field bunched back together, giving Perez a shot to overtake Verstappen on the restart. However, the Dutchman quickly bolted away after a well-timed launch, and left his teammate in the dust, and vulnerable to an attack from the hungry Alonso. Perez used the pace of his RB19 to fend off the Spaniard behind him, and the top three settled in to tick some laps off and catch their breaths after what had been a chaotic start to the grand prix.
However, there was no chance for the midfield runners to catch their breaths. The running order was all jumbled up thanks to the rain, with drivers in quicker cars at the back, and those with slower cars running in the top ten. Points looked like they could be on offer for Zhou Guanyu and Kevin Magnussen, who had timed their pit stops to perfection and had run well in the wet. However, as soon as DRS was enabled, the true pace of their cars showed, and they quickly fell down the order. Mercedes had gotten their strategy all wrong, and had both their drivers running outside the top 15 at one point, with George Russell all the way down in 18th place after starting third. Russell and his teammate Lewis Hamilton had a lot of ground to make up, as did the McLaren pairing of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, who also found themselves at the back of the pack. These four drivers would go on to perform a scintillating display of overtaking, as they danced past slower cars to try and recover the ground they had lost.
One driver going in the wrong direction, however, was Charles Leclerc. His Ferrari had picked up floor damage in all the chaos of the opening laps, and it was clear that his pace was suffering as a result. The Monegasque lost place after place, having nothing with which to defend himself from those behind him. At one point, he was squabbling with rookie Liam Lawson, who was in his first ever F1 race, for what was almost last place. Ferrari saw that all hope was lost for Leclerc, and told him to box and retire the car due to the damage. Leclerc finished plum-last in the race after a frustrating 41 laps for him and the Scuderia.
Just when it seemed like things were calming down and the finishing order may have been decided, dark clouds once again began to stalk the circuit. A huge cell of rain was on its way from the ocean, and it looked to be much more severe than the one that had hit at the start of the grand prix. Race teams buckled down, and waited for the inevitable. Sure enough, with just over ten laps to go, the skies opened up, and rain began pouring down on Zandvoort. All drivers immediately boxed for intermediates, but as the precipitation intensified, it became clear that the full-wet tires were needed to cope with the extreme conditions. Esteban Ocon was the first to fit the extreme wets, shortly followed by Max Verstappen. Unfortunately, not all teams were able to make the switch in time. Drivers started aquaplaning into turn one, including Zhou Guanyu, who missed the gravel trap entirely and careened into the wall.
The FIA had no choice but to red flag the race for safety purposes. However, they did so right after Sergio Perez had entered the pit lane for full-wet tires. By the time the Red Bull mechanics had done the tire change and Perez had left his box, the event was under a red flag, and the pit lane was closed. This meant the Mexican had to slide to a stop at pit exit, but not before he had dropped down to sixth in the race. Thankfully, Red Bull was saved from what looked to be their strategy blunder, as the stewards would reinstate the running order from the lap before, which elevated Perez back to third place. As the cars pulled down the pit lane and the drivers emerged to dry themselves off, the F1 world awaited the impending decision from the FIA as to whether or not the Dutch GP would be restarted.
Thankfully, the intense weather subsided, and racing was again able to resume. The safety car led the field to a rolling restart, with Verstappen in the lead, followed by Alonso, Perez, Gasly, Sainz, and Hamilton. The defending world champion did not get as good of a restart as he had gotten previously, and for a lap or two, it looked as though Fernando Alonso could be in position to steal a win. However, the pace of the RB19 would eventually prevail, and Alonso was forced to settle for second. Meanwhile, the stewards handed Perez a five second time penalty for speeding in the pitlane, meaning that not only did he have no shot at the win, but that he could miss out on a podium as well. Pierre Gasly in the Alpine was hot on his tail, and when the two crossed the line at the end of the race, Gasly was well within five seconds of the Mexican. Perez dropped down to fourth, giving Gasly his first podium since Baku 2021, and his first podium with Alpine.
Sainz, Hamilton and Norris battled tooth-and-nail all the way to the checkered flag, but ultimately no overtakes would actually occur. Norris was half a car’s length away from taking sixth off of Hamilton, but the young McLaren driver would have to settle for seventh after an up-and-down day. Alex Albon held on to finish eighth, ahead of Oscar Piastri and Esteban Ocon. Unfortunately for Mercedes, George Russell had had a tangle with Norris shortly after the red flag restart which caused a puncture that took him out of contention for points. Russell did finish the race, but he was a whopping 55 seconds behind the winner due to his pit stop to change the ailing tire.
This victory for Verstappen was his ninth in a row, tying Sebastian Vettel’s record for most consecutive grand prix victories. It was also the Dutchman’s third home victory in as many tries, which sent the fans at the track into a frenzy. The support for Verstappen in the Netherlands is almost unrivaled, and those in the grandstands were decked out in orange to support their world champion on his way to a record-equalling result. Verstappen basked in the glory of his home win, as Alonso and Gasly celebrated impressive podium finishes. All-in-all, the 2023 Dutch Grand Prix was about as exciting an F1 race as you will come across. It featured treacherous conditions, intense wheel-to-wheel battling resulting in some brilliant overtakes, a jumbled-up finishing order, and a historical winner when all was said and done. Take a bow, Zandvoort; you have just delivered an all-time classic.
