Norris takes dominant pole from Verstappen

Lando Norris beat Max Verstappen to pole position for the Dutch Grand Prix, with Oscar Piastri third in the second McLaren.

George Russell finished just behind for Friday practice pacesetter Mercedes, which had Lewis Hamilton 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 1m10.074s 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 1m10.029s, gaining particularly from a very strong middle sector, but Norris’s final sector was very strong.

Norris roared to a 1m09.673s – the only driver to crack that barrier – as Verstappen was pushed to 0.356s adrift.

But Piastri could not knock the home hero off the front row as he paid the price for not going quicker than before in the middle sector and finished 0.499s down on his team-mate 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 10th.

In Q2, Leclerc’s last-gasp improvement knocked out his Ferrari team-mate 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 12th.

Then came Yuki Tsunoda and the Haas pair 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 swift exit for RB.

Perez’s extra lap was required after his first attempt was scuppered 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 as others amid the track evolution factor and was out in 17th despite setting a personal best time on his last Q1 lap, with Sauber pair Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu also out after doing their final…