The summer break is officially over and done with. The Formula 1 circus returned from its holidays in typically rambunctious fashion, laying down an assortment of storylines to make up for a fallow period in the annual soap opera.
For those missing sandy beaches, the seaside town of Zandvoort offered a neat way to wean people off their out-of-office messages and thrust them back onto the F1 hamster wheel. The racing action might have been stilted in comparison to the pre-summer affairs, as the tight circuit draped across the Dutch dunes made the wheel-to-wheel stuff a little more difficult, but it nonetheless added another element to a once one-dimensional title affair.
But wait, there’s more: the announcement of a rookie driver kicked things off, albeit not the one that was expected – although we’ll get to that later. There was an attempted seizure of assets as a sponsor was awaiting payment, a qualifying disqualification based upon the tightest margins, and a team’s reversal in fortunes in the race after a disappointing Saturday. Let’s go through the Dutch Grand Prix weekend’s best bits.
1. Norris’ iffy starts might not matter any more
McLaren’s Lando Norris lost the skirmish at the start but beat Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in the battle for victory
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
When Lando Norris parked his car on the front-most grid slot with the third-biggest pole margin of the year (0.356s), all of the subsequent discourse had laid around his track record of losing the lead into the first corner. A butterfingered grasp of pole had contrived to cost Norris at both Hungary and Barcelona, as the Briton’s ‘second phase’ clutch release proved to be a bugbear of his. The pressure to perform was palpable this time around.
And then it happened again. Norris matched fellow front-row occupant Verstappen in the initial getaway reaction, but gathered too much wheelspin that stunted his progress into the opening corner. The Dutchman grabbed the lead into Turn 1, presumably leading to some choice words from Norris enclosed within his neon-yellow crash lid. But he regrouped and, although Norris fell out of DRS range, he kept tabs on Verstappen and never let the lead exceed two seconds.
When it became apparent that Verstappen couldn’t build much of a break, Norris turned the screw and started to loom larger in the Red Bull’s mirrors. A lap 17 tilt into Tarzanbocht was seen off, yet the
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