Luke’s Weekend Take – Dutch GP 2024

Leave a Comment / News / By

Dutch GP 2024: Norris Secures Pole as McLaren Dominates in Zandvoort

Dutch GP 2024

After what seems to be a very long 3 weeks of no F1 and struggling with what to do over the weekend, F1 is back, and we had some interesting news over the summer. We are at Zandvoort in Netherlands for the Dutch GP for Round 15 of the 2024 F1 Season.

Carlos Sainz confirmed that he will be pairing up with Alex Albon at Williams from 2025 onwards which was quite a shock to most of us as we all probably expected for him to go to a bigger team or maybe at Audi, currently known as Sauber given his father’s connections with them, however Sainz feels confident that this is the right choice for his career and who knows, maybe Sainz knows something we don’t like maybe Andrian Newey will be heading there for the rule changes in 2026.

The other news we had is that Jack Doohan will be driving for Alpine alongside Pierre Gasly for the 2025 season which makes Jack the second Rookie confirmed for 2025. Talking about rookies, we also get news from Red Bull as Marko Helmut confirms that Liam Lawson will be in a Red Bull seat next year. It wasn’t confirmed which Red Bull team he will be driving for whether that will be alongside Max Verstappen replacing Sergio Perez or in a seat with VCARB alongside Yuki Tsunoda replacing Daniel Ricciardo. This really puts the pressure on both Perez and Ricciardo for the second half of the season as they will both be fighting to keep their seat in F1.

We start looking at the action now in FP1 as we have very tricky conditions as it is raining with a lot of wind which will make the track very tricky for the drivers to ensure they keep the car on track and also learn as much as they can as the race on Sunday might be wet as well. Robert Shwartzman will be running instead of Valtteri Bottas for him to get a bit of running on track.

First out on track was Pierre Gasly who was out on the full wets and after a few exploratory laps, we see him come back in and didn’t go for a push lap in order not to risk anything this early on in the weekend. We look at Nico Hulkenberg as we see him a few times through FP1 struggle with the breaks as his front wheels seem to have been locking up unexpectedly as it didn’t seem that Hulkenberg was doing anything wrong. On 2 occasions we see Hulkenberg goes off track into the gravel due to this issue and luckily for Nico, both times he was able to keep the car out of the barriers.

The first timed lap of the session comes in 17 minutes after the start as we see Charles Leclerc get on a push lap in his Ferrari and finally, we start seeing some action on track. Hulkenberg wasn’t the only one having issues keeping their cars on track as we see Max Verstappen spins half way through the session on the chicane out of Turn 12 as he clipped the kerb too much on the exit and the car spins but luckily he didn’t hit any barriers and managed to spin the car around and get back going. Pierre Gasly also goes off on his push lap as he took his Alpine to the gravel in Turn 1 as he didn’t manage to slow the car down in time.

With 12 minutes to go in the session, the weather had cleared up and we actually see some slicks come on as a dry line was forming up as we see both McLaren drivers come out on the softs and the rest of the field followed suit apart from Ferrari as they opt for the medium tyres. Fastest laps at this stage of the session was being traded, lap after lap as the racing line keeps getting dryer and the drivers keep finding grip on track. At the end of the session we see Lando Norris top the charts followed by Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton.

For FP2 we see the sun still shining and seems like it was going to be a dry one where we might see some normal running for the teams. Drivers were still having some issues on track as we see George Russell lock up and goes onto the gravel very early on and he comes on saying something very strange is happening on the car. 17 minutes in we do see the Red Flag make an appearance as we see Hulkenberg go into the barriers into Turn 1 as it seems that the issue on the brakes is still not fixed as his rear snapped and gone straight into the barriers. After the session goes green again, we hear a radio from Carlos Sainz saying that there seems to be an issue, and his team call him in and ask him not to change gear as there is a gearbox issue and Sainz is also out of FP2.

Other than that the remainder of FP2 was all normal and teams put their head down and ran their test scenarios with the exception of a very small moment between Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris as we see them briefly touch wheels towards the end of the session as Norris goes to squeeze between 2 cars, luckily there was no damage and the incident was not even noted. At the end of the session we see George Russell top the leaderboard for FP2 followed by Oscar Piastri and Lewis Hamilton.

Zandvoort Qualifying Shocker: Norris on Pole, Hamilton Penalized, and Albon Disqualified

In FP3, the bad weather was back as we see rain and wind again which meant it was going to be another tricky session for the drivers and the stakes are higher on a Saturday given that qualifying is only a few hours after so if you get any damage you might be running a risk of not running in qualifying. We see Nico Hulkenberg being the first one out on track to ensure the brake issues were fixed on his Haas as he has had a horrible day on Friday where he was having brake issues while his teammate Kevin Magnussen was not experiencing the same issues. After one lap on the full wets we see him come back into the pits saying it is ready for inters. After Hulkenberg comes back out on the inters, we see him 10 mins into the session go straight into the barriers into Turn 12 as his brake issues seem to still be present and this time he went into the barriers once more. He was able to make it back to the pits and somehow half of his wing was stuck under his car and was noted for driving in an unsafe condition however I doubt he knew it was there.

No Red Flag come out of the Hulkenberg incident but 15 mins in we see the Yellow flags back out  as we see George Russell go straight into Turn 1 but luckily didn’t hit the barriers and manages to find his way to the escape road and the track goes green again but it wasn’t 30 seconds before we see Yellow Flags again and we cut to a shot where we see the Williams of Logan Sargeant in a very bad state as he goes into the Barrier after the exit of Turn 3 as o the exit he dips his wheel in the grass and loses control of the car and he goes into the barriers with some speed. The car also catches fire and luckily Sargeant was ok and managed to get out of the car without getting injured while the Marshalls came to extinguish the car. This will be a big job for Williams to get this car ready for qualifying and I doubt they will be able to get the car ready for qualifying.

The barriers took a bit of a beating and the session was Red Flags for most of it but we got comms that  the session will resume with 2 minutes left on the clock and as soon as that news was confirmed it was mayhem in the pitlane for everyone to come out on track to get the last bit of testing done. On the way out we see Verstappen overtake 2 cars while still in the pitlane, but the last one might get him in trouble as he crossed the white line on the exit, and he was noted to the stewards for not following the race director instructions. Not all the drivers made it round in time but for those who did, they put down a fast lap and at the end it was Pierre Gasly with the fastest time followed by Kevin Magnussen and Valtteri Bottas in FP3.

Onto Qualifying now which is fairly important at Zandvoort as given that there is overtaking opportunities, track position is as important here. The weather seems to be fairly clear for qualifying however there is rumours of rain towards the end of the qualifying. In Q1 we see a potential impeding between Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton as we see Hamilton take a corner on the outside of it while Perez was on a fast lap and Perez thought that he was impeded but it seemed that Hamilton gave him the space he needed to and that is also what Hamilton said. This was reported to the stewards and both drivers will go see the stewards after qualifying. With 3 minutes left in Q1 we see Sargeant still not out on track which wasn’t surprising given the state of the car in FP3 which meant that Sargeant will be starting in 20th tomorrow. At the end of Q1 we end up losing Daniel Ricciardo, Esteban Ocon, Valtteri Bottas, Zhou Guanyu and Logan Sargeant as the track seems to be ramping up as some rubber started to be laid out on track after the rain. Ocon was really not happy with the car as we hear him on the radio saying that he doesn’t know what is happening and that the car has been a disaster since the beginning of the weekend.

In Q2 we see Lando Norris being quickest after the first runs followed by Oscar Piastri and George Russell with Max Verstappen in 4th. For the last runs we see everyone come out for a second run apart from the top 4 and at the end of the runs we see Carlos Sainz, Lewis Hamilton, Yuki Tsunoda, Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen being eliminated and the big shock here were obviously Sainz and Hamilton being eliminated, given that there was Alex Albon, Pierre Gasly and both Aston Martin drivers still in the Top 10. Another thing to note here was that Verstappen ended up finishing in 8th place in Q2 after deciding not to go out and this could have gone bad for him if Sainz and Hamilton managed to get their lap together. Hamilton got a radio message from Bono saying that he was only 4 tenths off P1 in Q2 which shows how tight it was to go through.

In Q3 after the initial runs we see Norris on top once more on provisional pole followed by Piastri and Verstappen, but Norris was about a tenth and a half ahead of Verstappen at this point. After the 2nd runs, we see Verstappen going first and he briefly took provisional pole from Norris as the crowd goes wild however this only lasted a few seconds as Norris went even quicker putting 4 tenths between him and Verstappen which is huge on this track. After everyone finished their runs, we see Norris securing his 4th Pole position in his career followed by Max Verstappen, Oscar Piastri, George Russell, Sergio Perez, Charles Leclerc, Fernando Alonso, Alex Albon, Lance Stroll and Pierre Gasly form the Top 10 for tomorrows race.

Few notes that came out after qualifying is that Lewis Hamilton picked up a 3 place grid penalty for impeding Perez which means that he will be starting in 15th instead of 12th and Alex Albon got disqualified from qualifying after an impressive qualifying for having an illegal floor on his car as it was not within the FIA specs. This means that Sainz will be starting in the Top 10 now in tomorrow’s race.

Who do you think will come out on top tomorrow in the race? Seems like McLaren might have this in the bag and Norris could make a bit of a dent in the gap for the drivers championship especially if Piastri also manages to make it past Verstappen? Tune in tomorrow to find out.

Share this article with your friends

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *