Verstappen wins Dutch GP to retake Championship lead

05/09/2021

Max Verstappen led every lap bar one to win his home Grand Prix at Circuit Zandvoort, delighting the 80,000 Dutch fans in attendance.

Title rival Lewis Hamilton pushed Verstappen for the whole race to finish second, taking the point for the fastest lap to sit three points behind the Red Bull driver in the championship standings.

Valtteri Bottas, who briefly led as Mercedes split their strategy to try and hold up Verstappen, finished third.

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Pierre Gasly backed up his excellent qualifying on Saturday, the Frenchman finishing where he started in fourth.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc finished in fifth ahead of the Alpine of Fernando Alonso, the Spaniard getting a characteristically brilliant start to gain two places on the first lap before overtaking the second Ferrari of Carlos Sainz for sixth on the final lap.

Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez produced a series of great overtakes to finish in 8th after starting from the pitlane.

The second Alpine of Esteban Ocon finished in 9th ahead of Lando Norris, the 21-year-old McLaren driver recovering from his difficult qualifying to score the final point.

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Verstappen regains championship lead

Two difficult races in Britain and Hungary before the summer break meant Verstappen had surrendered his championship lead over Hamilton – as big as 33 points following his victory at July’s Austrian Grand Prix – going into last week’s race in Belgium.

Having been awarded the victory in Spa, however, the Dutchman overturned the three-point deficit to Hamilton coming into this weekend with a very mature drive at Zandvoort, back on the circuit for the first time since 1985.

Indeed, it was hard to begrudge the Dutchman his victory – as Hamilton said in his post-race interview, “[Red Bull and Verstappen] were just too quick for us.”

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Never more than 4 seconds behind the 23-year-old until he pitted to secure the fastest lap point on the penultimate lap, Hamilton deserves some credit for making it as hard as he did.

With sprint qualifying and a race to come in Monza next week, a track that has traditionally been suited to Mercedes because of their strong power unit, the 36-year-old will be confident of overturning his own three-point deficit.

Nonetheless, this weekend belonged to Verstappen, the Dutchman being in complete control despite the intense pressure and support from the Orange Army in the grandstands.

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Gasly and Alonso shine again

Alongside Verstappen, Pierre Gasly was without doubt the driver of the weekend.

After producing a wonderful lap on Saturday to qualify fourth, the Frenchman had “wondered why” Red Bull had opted to sign Sergio Perez for 2022 instead of giving him another chance.

His queries would only have been strengthened as he backed up his qualifying performance, never looking in danger from the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc behind as he brought home his AlphaTauri in fourth.

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Behind him, Fernando Alonso again proved as wily as ever, getting a characteristically brilliant start to be the only driver in the top 10 to gain more than one place on the opening lap.

Despite complaints that he was slow from teammate Ocon behind, Alonso managed his tyres well to be on the gearbox of fellow Spaniard Carlos Sainz come the end of the race, before overtaking the Ferrari on the final lap to secure only his third top-six finish of the season.

The result moved Alonso up to tenth in the championship, ahead of Ocon despite the Frenchman’s win in Hungary.

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Post-race interviews

Max Verstappen – “Incredible. The expectations were very high going into the weekend, and it’s never easy to fulfil that.

“I’m so happy to win here, to take the lead as well in the championship. It’s just an amazing day with the whole crowd here.”

Lewis Hamilton – “I gave it absolutely everything today. Flat out. I pushed as hard as they could. But they were just too quick for us.

“I’m going to call [Max] Noah from now on! Every time he got traffic they just moved out of the way!”

Valtteri Bottas – “Unfortunately for me, it was pretty uneventful. We tried a one-stop, so I went for a long first stint, tried to survive for the tyres until the end.

“We tried but we didn’t quite have the pace today.”