Max Verstappen extends title lead as he wins Dutch Grand Prix

Max Verstappen’s unchallenged run to a second Championship title continued with an easy win in a hectic Dutch Grand Prix.

Despite a late-race safety car period, the Dutch Red Bull driver had to overtake Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes in order to secure his 10th win in 15 races this year. Hamilton was infuriated after Mercedes didn’t swap his tyres when the safety car was out.

He was overtaken by team-mate George Russell and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc after the restart, leaving him exposed, for the podium spots.

With about 20 laps to go, Hamilton’s slim hopes of winning disappeared in a situation reminiscent of the one in which he lost his eighth world championship last year in Abu Dhabi.

Despite finishing fifth on the road, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz was demoted to eighth after a five-second penalty for an unsafe pit stop release. He held on to fourth in front of Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, Fernando Alonso’s Alpine, and Lando Norris’ McLaren.

Verstappen still in control

The final part of the race saw caution periods that hindered Verstappen’s cruise-to-victory run. Hamilton and Russell overtook Leclerc using a one-stop strategy rather than the two-stop strategy Verstappen and Ferrari employed.

In order to finish on the podium, Verstappen would have had to pass both Mercedes after his second stop, but he was saved from needing to do so by a strange series of events involving Yuki Tsunoda, a driver for Red Bull’s sister Alpha Tauri team.

After his pit stop, Tsunoda stopped on the track saying a wheel was not on, but the team said it was and told him to continue. A virtual safety car was then deployed.

With the VSC activated, Verstappen made his second stop and switched to the hard tyre, which he believed would be sufficient for the remaining distance. Mercedes, who had just made what they thought was their last stop, took advantage of the VSC to stop again and put on medium tyres.

After the VSC phase, Hamilton began to close in on Verstappen, reducing his lead from 15.4 to 10.7 seconds in six laps. However, with 16 laps to go, a safety car was deployed when Valtteri Bottas’ Alfa Romeo engine failed and he stopped on the pit straight, taking him out of the race.

Later in the lap, as the field was directed through the pits, Russell made the call to put on the softs, while Mercedes kept Hamilton on mediums.

Verstappen had much more grip on his tyres after the restart, allowing him to sweep around Hamilton at the first corner and retake control of the race.

Hamilton was furious after losing out on a podium place to Russell and then Leclerc, and he vented his anger on the radio, swearing that he could not believe how much they had messed him up.

On a weekend that was effectively a festival celebrating a national hero, Verstappen’s second Zandvoort home win in as many years sent a crowd of 105,000 wild.

“It’s always special to win your home Grand Prix, this year I had to work for it even more. An incredible weekend.” Said Verstappen

Bad afternoon for Ferrari

Despite starting the race with Leclerc and Sainz in second and third, Ferrari had another poor day a few races ago, when they still had title aspirations.

Team boss Mattia Binotto said the late call for Sainz to pit screwed up his race when he was in the last corner and the mechanics didn’t have time to change his tyres.

Due to Mercedes’ quick race pace and one-stop strategy, Leclerc was looking to finish fourth. The late caution flag, as well as Mercedes’ choice not to give Hamilton a tyre change, provided him with a second chance, and he followed Russell past Hamilton to take third.

“To be honest, much better [than third] was difficult to do,” said Leclerc. “We were a little unlucky with the VSC. I don’t know if this would have changed anything, Max was too quick today.”

Despite Leclerc’s insistence that the championship isn’t over, Verstappen is likely to win it after the next race in Italy, in Asia this weekend.

If he wins the next race in Singapore and takes a 138-point lead, he’ll be world champion. If he leaves Japan one week later, he just needs to be 112 points behind.

Williams Racing Performance

Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance:

I think we can be pretty pleased with the way that we executed the race today. There were a huge range of valid strategies, with all three compounds offering potentially useful trades in the overcast conditions. The Safety Car periods mixed things up a little and gave teams the opportunity to change from their base strategies. We were quite comfortable on the Medium tyre and looked to be finding a good rhythm on the Hard before the Safety Car gave us the opportunity to switch Alex to the Soft.

Ultimately, we couldn’t score any points and the Safety Car didn’t help our cause today as it allowed Gasly a free tyre change. However, we were able to beat the Alfa Romeo and Haas cars as well as a McLaren and an Aston Martin. It was a shame to finish behind Pierre for the second weekend in a row, but he had good pace and qualified four places ahead of Alex. Hopefully we can turn the tables on him next weekend!

Nicky went for an aggressive start on the Soft tyre but fell back and completed a fairly lonely race in free air. He showed decent pace on new tyres but struggled to control the degradation. We will investigate this over the coming days to see if we can find some ways to improve the situation in Monza.

Alex Albon:

I think coming into today, we didn’t have high expectations, so think we’ve proven we’re not too far away from the points. We didn’t expect much from the high downforce circuit, so it’s positive and I think going forward we won’t be so scared of these types of circuits and can focus on fighting for points. I was happy with the car, despite just lacking a bit of lap time. There’s still a little bit to find, but we can work on this and look at what we can do, as right now we’re fine tuning the package and know its limitations. It’s not points but it’s a good job.

Nicholas Latifi:

It was just a race to forget really. We’ve been struggling with pace the whole weekend and it’s quite confusing to me as to why. Due to the issue in qualifying we didn’t really get the chance to see where we would have been on pace, so one to learn from.

Dutch Grand Prix Results

2022 FIA Formula One World Championship Schedule