Victory for McLaren driver

The Dutch Grand Prix – LIVE from 3pm

Lando Norris (right) wins in Zandvoort ahead of local hero Max Verstappen.

(Bild: APA/AFP/JOHN THYS, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Lando Norris spoils Verstappen's home party at Zandvoort! The McLaren driver won by a clear margin ahead of the championship leader. Charles Leclerc in the Ferrari came third.

World champion Max Verstappen failed to give his compatriots a home win for the first time since returning to the Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix three years ago. The Red Bull star was beaten by McLaren man Lando Norris in Zandvoort on Sunday and is now winless in five races after finishing second. Norris landed the second GP victory of his career in superior style, but is still 70 points behind Verstappen in second place in the championship standings.

Norris won the first race after a four-week summer break with a lead of more than 22 seconds. Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc finished third. Norris celebrated his only race win to date in Miami in May. He has recently emphasized that he has no serious hopes of winning the world championship. The 24-year-old Englishman was self-critical, saying that he had already made too many mistakes over the course of the season. Nine of the season's 24 races are still to come, the next one this Sunday in Monza.

The result:

Things look better for McLaren in the constructors' championship. There, the gap to Red Bull is now only 30 points. Oscar Piastri finished fourth, Verstappen's team-mate Sergio Perez was sixth behind Carlos Sainz in the second Ferrari. Record world champion Lewis Hamilton, who had won two of the last three races, moved up from 15th on the grid to eighth, directly behind his Mercedes team-mate George Russell.

Lando Norris

(Bild: Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Poor start from Norris
Norris had already left Verstappen well behind in qualifying, but once again made a poor start. Verstappen got away much better and easily passed his rival up to turn one. However, the McLaren man always remained in the rear-view mirror of the three-time world champion, attacking him for the first time on lap 17 - and passing him one lap later on the start-finish straight.

The drivers' world championship standings:

Winds of more than 30 km/h blew in persistently from the North Sea. Verstappen repeatedly complained on the radio about the drivability of his car. Norris countered his early stop after 28 of 72 laps on the following lap and from then on controlled the race on the narrow track with its special banked corners. On the final lap, he even scored the extra point for the fastest race lap on old tires.

Over the entire weekend, 305,000 spectators came to Zandvoort. It was not the Verstappen party he had hoped for at his 200th Grand Prix start. The last Zandvoort winner not named Max Verstappen was Niki Lauda in 1985. Austria's three-time world champion celebrated the 25th and final GP victory of his career 39 years ago in the last race in the Netherlands until 2021.