Month: August 2024

Lando Norris led a McLaren front row in qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix, while championship leader Max Verstappen could only manage P7 in the Red Bull.

George Russell took third for practice pacesetter Mercedes, with Oscar Piastri and Verstappen set to see the stewards post-qualifying due to an incident in Q1 where the McLaren was released into the Red Bull’s path in the pits and Verstappen had to step on the brakes.

Norris led Piastri after the first runs in Q3, with the Dutch Grand Prix winner leading the way with a time of one minute, 19.401 seconds and his teammate 0.035 seconds down.

At this stage, the two Mercedes trailed in third and fourth, with the Ferraris, as were the Red Bull cars – Verstappen down in eighth and behind Sergio Perez after saving a massive snap at the Parabolica on his opening Q3 effort.

In the second and final runs, Verstappen ran first of the frontrunners in Perez’s slipstream, but although he improved his personal best he only moved up slightly in the order – only beating Perez who went off at Lesmo 2 while still running ahead of his teammate on their final laps.

Behind, Norris only went quicker in sector two compared to his previous personal best, but he still improved the first-place benchmark to set pole with a time of one minute, 19.327 seconds.

Piastri could not go quicker across all three sectors of his second Q3 lap but stayed second when Sainz could not head him and then Russell slotted into third slightly later for Mercedes.

Leclerc also shuffled Sainz back to fifth, with Hamilton ending up sixth – but with a healthy margin to the Red Bull cars behind.

The other Q3 runners – Alex Albon and Nico Hulkenberg – ended up ninth and tenth for Williams and Haas.

The start of Q2 was delayed by nearly ten minutes as the marshals had to sweep gravel off the circuit at “multiple areas” – per an FIA spokesperson – with Franco Colapinto’s Lesmo 2 gravel trip and Kevin Magnussen going off briefly and Ascari and for longer at the Parabolica.

After this, Fernando Alonso was the highest-profile driver to exit in Q2, as he ended up P11 for Aston Martin – ahead of RB’s Daniel Ricciardo, Magnussen and the Alpine duo of Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon.

In Q1, Ricciardo’s last-gasp improvement knocked out Yuki Tsunoda, with Lance Stroll shuffled back to P17 ahead of Williams rookie Colapinto, who had an off on his final run.

Behind were Sauber pair Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu, who were running behind the various Magnussen offs when it came to completing their final laps despite scattered gravel and various yellow flags.

So a thrilling qualifying session at the temple of speed and the McLarens continue to impress by being the quickest car. By starting on the front row with rival Red Bull knocked down to row four, this is an important moment in the championship. Let’s see what the race has in store.

Italian Grand Prix, qualifying positions:
1 Lando Norris McLaren 1:19.327
2 Oscar Piastri McLaren 1:19.436
3 George Russell Mercedes 1:19.440
4 Charles Leclerc Ferrari 1:19.461
5 Carlos Sainz Ferrari 1:19.467
6 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:19.513
7 Max Verstappen Red Bull 1:20.022
8 Sergio Perez Red Bull 1:20.062
9 Alexander Albon Williams 1:20.299
10 Nico Hulkenberg Haas 1:20.339
11 Fernando Alonso Aston Martin 1:20.421
12 Daniel Ricciardo RB 1:20.479
13 Kevin Magnussen Haas 1:20.698
14 Pierre Gasly Alpine 1:20.738
15 Esteban Ocon Alpine 1:20.764
16 Yuki Tsunoda RB 1:20.945
17 Lance Stroll Aston Martin 1:21.013
18 Franco Colapinto Williams 1:21.061
19 Valtteri Bottas Sauber 1:21.101
20 Zhou Guanyu Sauber 1:21.445

Lando Norris earned his second Formula 1 victory at the Dutch Grand Prix with an excellent race performance to beat Max Verstappen at his home race.

Despite losing the lead into the first corner, Norris held his nerve and passed Verstappen to take back P1. Lando immediately started to build a break over the Red Bull to ensure he had a considerable gap in hand – crossing the finishing 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.

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 with too much wheelspin into the first corner and lost ground to Verstappen into Turn 1.

Verstappen then proceeded to build up a DRS fightback through immediately putting over a second on Norris, which grew to 1.5 seconds 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 tyre management to close in on Verstappen, although his attempt with DRS into Turn 1 at the start of lap 17 was fended off.

His assault on the next 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, 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 holding off a lengthy spell of pressure from Oscar Piastri, having undercut the McLaren driver and George Russell during the pitstops.

The Ferrari driver 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 stage; 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 Red Bull driver’s robust defence to move up to sixth.

This was set to become fifth as he caught Russell, but the Mercedes 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 ten, the latter relegating Nico Hulkenberg from the points.

So a well deserved second victory for Lando Norris. This was an impressive result for Lando following his debut win in Miami. He held his nerve despite a wheel spinning start. Caught and passed Max Verstappen. Pulled away with superior race pace and victory plus fastest lap is a bonus.

Dutch Grand Prix, race results:
1 Lando Norris McLaren 1:30:45.519
2 Max Verstappen Red Bull +22.896s
3 Charles Leclerc Ferrari +25.439s
4 Oscar Piastri McLaren +27.337s
5 Carlos Sainz Ferrari +32.137s
6 Sergio Perez Red Bull +39.542s
7 George Russell Mercedes +44.617s
8 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes +49.599s
9 Pierre Gasly Alpine +1 lap
10 Fernando Alonso Aston Martin +1 lap
11 Nico Hulkenberg Haas +1 lap
12 Daniel Ricciardo RB +1 lap
13 Lance Stroll Aston Martin +1 lap
14 Alexander Albon Williams +1 lap
15 Esteban Ocon Alpine +1 lap
16 Logan Sargeant Williams +1 lap
17 Yuki Tsunoda RB +1 lap
18 Kevin Magnussen Haas +1 lap
19 Valtteri Bottas Sauber +2 laps
20 Zhou Guanyu Sauber +2 laps

Lando Norris achieved his fourth career pole position by taking the top grid spot ahead of fan favourite Max Verstappen at the Dutch Grand Prix. Oscar Piastri was third fastest in the other McLaren.

George Russell finished in fourth after setting the pace in Friday’s practice. Not so for Lewis Hamilton, who fail to progress from Q2 in a session where all the drivers were struggling to build tyre temperature on the cool track surface that was very green after further rain hit the event earlier on Saturday.

Norris led Q3 throughout – his initial lap of one minute, 10.074 seconds on the first runs putting him ahead of Piastri and Verstappen at this stage.

Verstappen led the pack around for the final go and improved significantly to rise to provisional pole with a time of one minute, 10.029 seconds, gaining particularly from a very strong middle sector, but Norris’s final sector was better.

Norris roared to the top with a lap time of one minute, 09.673 seconds – the only driver to break that barrier – as Verstappen was pushed to 0.356 seconds adrift.

But Piastri could not knock the crowd hero off the front row as he paid the price for not going quicker than before in the middle sector and finished 0.499 seconds down on his teammate despite putting in a personal best time at the end.

Russell did enough to beat Sergio Perez to fourth, with Charles Leclerc the lead Ferrari in sixth.

Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll ran offset to the rest in the middle of Q3 as they only had one set of new tyres left for the final segment, as did everyone except the McLarens, Verstappen and Russell.

Alonso took seventh and Stroll ninth, with Alex Albon getting in between them and Pierre Gasly behind in P10.

In Q2, Leclerc’s last-gasp improvement knocked out his Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz, who had not driven on the softs this weekend pre-qualifying due to his Friday gearbox issue and the rain seen so far at this event. Hamilton missed the cut behind in P12.

Then came Yuki Tsunoda and the Haas duo of Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen.

In Q1, Perez’s jump from the drop zone to head the segment using an extra set of softs shuffled Daniel Ricciardo to a early exit for RB.

Perez’s extra lap was required after his first attempt was impeded coming across Hamilton going slowly on the outside of Turn 9 in an incident that will be investigated now the session has concluded.

Esteban Ocon could not find the same improvements due to the track evolution factor and was out in P17 despite setting a personal best time on his last Q1 lap, with the Sauber pair of Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu also out after doing their final efforts ahead of many others.

Logan Sargeant missed qualifying for Williams as his car could not be repaired in time after his massive FP3 crash.

So another Norris versus Verstappen fight for the race win. Can Lando upset the home fans by winning at the Dutch Grand Prix? Bring on the race!

Dutch Grand Prix, qualifying positions:
1 Lando Norris McLaren 1:09.673
2 Max Verstappen Red Bull 1:10.029
3 Oscar Piastri McLaren 1:10.172
4 George Russell Mercedes 1:10.244
5 Sergio Perez Red Bull 1:10.416
6 Charles Leclerc Ferrari 1:10.582
7 Fernando Alonso Aston Martin 1:10.633
8 Alexander Albon Williams 1:10.653
9 Lance Stroll Aston Martin 1:10.857
10 Pierre Gasly Alpine 1:11.718
11 Carlos Sainz Ferrari 1:11.327
12 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:11.375
13 Yuki Tsunoda RB 1:11.603
14 Nico Hulkenberg Haas 1:11.832
15 Kevin Magnussen Haas 1:11.630
16 Daniel Ricciardo RB 1:11.943
17 Esteban Ocon Alpine 1:11.995
18 Valtteri Bottas Sauber 1:12.168
19 Zhou Guanyu Sauber 1:13.261
20 Logan Sargeant Williams No time