Adam Cooper F1

Max Verstappen insists that potentially losing out in the 2024 Formula 1 World Championship race “is not going to change my life”, adding that with the current performance of the Red Bull RB20 the matter is not in his hands.

Verstappen still has a healthy 70-point lead over Lando Norris, but the McLaren driver’s dominant win in Zandvoort indicated that he now has the momentum.

Verstappen insists that he’s not stressed by the current situation.

“Listen, I just do the best I can,” he said. “If I win it or not, it’s not going to change my life. Would I like to win it? Yes, of course. But it’s not in my hands with the performance of the car.

“I just try to do the best I can, try to give feedback, try to make it faster. If that’s going to be enough to the end of the year, I don’t know.

“But I do know that we’re going to give it everything we have as a team to try and be more competitive than what we showed of course in Zandvoort because that was, I think, just a very poor weekend for us, and just go from there.”

Asked if he is still enjoying this season he said: “I am enjoying it. Yeah. Would I like to win more? Yes, of course. But I also knew that a season like we had last year is very unrealistic.

“But did I expect it to be like this? Not really with, of course, how we ended and how we started. So now it’s up to us to just try and make it better. But I know that everyone is working flat out to make it better.”

Verstappen says a combination of factors made his home race complicated.

“The problems in Zandvoort with the wind and the rain, it was very difficult to get a bit of a read,” he said.

“But a different weekend now. Of course, besides the stuff that we want to try on the car, the track is quite different.

“So we also need to keep track on that to make the right to make the right calls. But we’re trying a lot of stuff to try and improve the balance of the car. “

Asked by this writer if his home race was a wake-up call for his team Verstappen disagreed.

“I wouldn’t want to call it a wake-up call,” he said. “It was just not the best weekend for us for different reasons. We couldn’t just get the car to work how we wanted it.

“Probably the wind made it very difficult for our car with the balance issues that we have. And it was just not the strongest weekend.”

Verstappen also downplayed the suggestion that correlation issues had hampered progress: 

“For sure, some things might not have correlated how we wanted it, but in general I think we need to fix the general balance of the car, the behaviour.

“So this is something that crept in, and now we have to try and get rid of it.”

He added: “I think we are understanding where we need to find stuff, and what we see in the wind tunnel, what we see from CFD. That is not the problem.”

Aston scored a point in Zandvoort but the team wants much more

Aston Martin Formula 1 boss Mike Krack admits that the AMR24 “is not good enough” in the wake of another disappointing weekend in Zandvoort.

Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll started seventh and eighth, but they both lost out to Pierre Gasly on the first lap.

While Alonso eventually salvaged a point for 10^th place Stroll could finish only 13^th, having lost one spot to a pit speeding penalty.

Krack admitted that the race had been disappointing after a decent Saturday.

“I think we had a very strong qualifying,” he told this writer. “I think the drivers did a fantastic job in very difficult conditions, in the wind, and we started more or less in the best possible position for where we are with the car.

“And actually, we hoped for a bit more today, but we got passed on the start by one competitor, and then also by strategy. We [Stroll] could not get Hulkenberg at the end.

“So disappointing. A lot of hard work for one point. We take it, but we have to urgently improve the car performance.

“For the drivers, it’s really tough, if you move backwards from a hard-earned start position. The car is not good enough.”

While a point in a race where all the cars finished was not a disaster Krack insisted that the team has to do better.

“Normally we prefer to look to the front than the cars behind,” he said. “We thought after qualifying maybe we misjudged a bit the situation, or maybe the drivers did really an outstanding job yesterday.

“Which probably is the case, because we thought we had a bit more pace. And today we were reminded that we hadn’t.”

Alonso himself suggested that 10^th place actually flattered the car at Zandvoort.

“I think probably even one point is a little bit too much for the pace we have,” said the Spaniard. “But we did a good qualifying yesterday, and starting P7 obviously that gave us the possibility to score this point.

“And we need to get better. There are a couple of races already that we are struggling to keep up with some of the midfield teams, and we need to understand why, and we need to be better.”

Alonso acknowledged that the car does at least have good one lap pace.

“I think qualifyings are probably our strength this year,” he said. “We’ve been very fast in qualifying, and again, in this kind of circuit, it’s difficult to overtake.

“It’s a better to put two cars in Q3, it’s normally a good sign. And yesterday, we were probably a little bit better than what we should be. And today is reality.

“And we need to get better. We need to understand the car better. We need to bring some new parts for the next races and try to be as we started the year.

“We were not fighting with the top four teams, but we were a couple of tenths clear of the midfield, and we were in that middle position. And we want to be back by Abu Dhabi.”

Gasly earned two precious points in the Dutch GP

Pierre Gasly says a strong start that saw him charge past both Aston Martins was the key to earning a surprise ninth place for Alpine in the Dutch GP.

Gasly made Q3 and qualified 10^th, and he gained a spot on the grid through the disqualification of Alex Albon.

Off the start he managed to pass both Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, leaving him seventh in the early stages.

He was unable to keep Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton behind, but he did a good job to bring the car home ninth, despite the queue behind Kevin Magnussen allowing the Astons to catch him at one stage.

“Yeah, big time,” he said when asked by this writer if he would have taken that result at the start of the weekend. “After Friday we definitely looked to struggle a lot, and the feel wasn’t great. So yeah, I would have signed straight away!

“It was a great start. I knew I wanted to go on the outside, if the space was available. And I saw Lance and Fernando kind of going on a tighter line. I just tried to roll the speed on the outside and got past these two guys, which I think played a big part in the rest of the race.

“I had some fun battles with Lewis defending, same with Carlos, and Fernando tried to show his nose a couple of times. So it was a pretty intense race, but I think as a team, we’re extremely happy to leave with two points, because it was very much looking very difficult.”

Gasly admitted that being able to run in clean air for much of the race was a luxury.

“Initially I thought Fernando is going to pull away if I don’t pass him,” he said. “I thought my race will be with Lance, and trying to get him at the start, but then get the free air behind Alonso.

“But in the end, I managed to get past both of them. I knew if I hold Fernando behind, he’s going to damage his tyres, or open a gap. And then after that, I just need to make sure I control my tyres as best as I could.

“So yeah, it was a luxury. They’ve been couple of moments, especially at the end there was that Magnussen thing, a couple of laps to the end where we all bunched up, and it was pretty hectic. 

“But in the end, very well executed, and the feeling in the car was good today. So it was great.”

Gasly acknowledged that it’s not easy for Alpine to score this season.

“I think definitely we’ve showed this here that on some tracks, we seem to be able to fight for these last points,” he said. “Top eight is on a different league at the minute.

“We know we’re fighting for this P9, P10, if nothing happens. I think on pure pace we know Aston is consistently faster than us.

“But today we got ahead of them, and they were stuck basically, they could not really use their full potential the whole race. That’s what we need to target whenever we can.

“And I think it was important to do a good quali, start right behind them, and get a good start.”

Meanwhile it was a difficult weekend for Gasly’s team mate Esteban Ocon, who started and finished 15^th.

“I think we did the maximum that we could on our side in this race,” said Ocon. “We see the positive is that Pierre and the team scored some points.

“So well done to them for that, and that’s a good thing, because we can hopefully point out the differences and where our performance wasn’t great.

“We have a couple days to do so. We will dig in with the team, and hopefully find what didn’t go to plan for the next race.”

Asked if his change of chassis between Spa and Zandvoort was one of the issues he said: “I won’t go into detail. That will stay within the team. But we have a lot to dig through, and it’s going to be important that we figure out how to have a normal performance weekend, like we had in the past.”

Zandvoort was a tricky weekend for Mercedes

Mercedes Formula 1 boss Toto Wolff has described the W15 is a “surprise box” in the wake of a disappointing weekend for the team at Zandvoort.

After Lewis Hamilton and George Russell won three of the four races held before the summer break they tumbled to seventh and eighth places in the Dutch GP, with Russell ahead after dropping back from an early third place.

Tyre degradation meant that both drivers stopped twice – and they were the only frontrunners obliged to do so.

“I think these cars are sometimes a surprise box,” said Wolff. “We had six podiums in a row, and that doesn’t look like the car that three weeks ago was first and second, at least first on merit.

“And you can’t really end up with a result like this without any major factor playing, and that’s something we need to analyse in the next few days, until Monza.

“Was it because we put something on the car that didn’t that didn’t help? Did we engineer something into the car that that wasn’t good? And how do you justify the swings of performance that some sometimes looked really good this weekend?

“And then obviously today that was, in terms of degradation, not very impressive.”

Regarding the strategy he said: “I don’t think that we had lots of choices. Our degradation was really bad, and we could have hung out there with a tyre that was going down and ended up P7, P8, or just try the two-stop and maybe catch Perez or Sainz, which we didn’t at the end.

“So whatever we’ve done didn’t really work because of the car not being in a good place.”

Wolff noted that circumstances didn’t leave the team with much information during practice.

“I think it was two factors,” he said. “We back-to-backed the update kit on Friday, which at the end left us with not a lot of data – the update kit that we put onto the car in Spa on Friday, and then took off again.

“And then obviously with the lack of running like everybody else maybe we didn’t decide the right things for the car. And so there could be a few factors at play that contributed to this non-performance.”

Wolff was reluctant to blame the new floor, which was abandoned prior to qualifying in Spa, and revived for Zandvoort.

“I don’t want to jump to into conclusions too quickly, because we’re going to look at it in the coming days and hopefully trying to find clues in the data,” he noted.

“Like I said before, was it a setup? Was it the track? What is it that we got wrong? Was it the floor that we put on the car? Was it all of this together?

“So hopefully we can sort it out until Monza and be competitive again. But the swing in performance between P1, P2 and P7, P8 is there’s something, there’s a biggie in there, that’s not something that was a simple setup decision, in my opinion.”

Asked if Monza’s nature would help the car he said: “I would hope very much hope that we can come back to the performances that we’ve shown in Spa.

“But it’s not only that it’s a high-speed track versus what we had here, because our car was competitive for practically all of the last few races. It’s just here, it was completely offset. So we’ve just got to get it right, and then we can play with the music again.”

Christian Horner admits that “the pressure is on” Red Bull to respond after a dominant victory for Lando Norris in the Dutch GP.

Max Verstappen’s lead was cut from 78 to 70 points, and while that is still a healthy cushion the manner of Norris’s victory was a real statement of intent with nine races left to run.

However Horner made it clear that Verstappen is still in a strong position, despite McLaren’s momentum.

“We’re lucky that they underperformed in the early part of the year,” he said. “We’ve got a 70-point buffer, but that can diminish pretty quickly. It’s remarkable that it’s only Lando’s second win in that car.

“But he’s driving well, he’s finding confidence. And yeah, the pressure is on us to respond.

“We’re used to being in championship fights over the years, and we’ll dig deep. And we’re going to fight with everything we’ve got over the remaining nine races.”

Expanding on the form of Red Bull’s main rival he said: “McLaren is setting the benchmark. It’s clear in terms of pace, they’ve been that at the last couple of races, or certainly in Hungary, they were very competitive. In Spa it was Mercedes. Here, Lando in particular was very, very strong.

“Definitely, they have the fastest car at the moment. We have to respond to that. It’s not rocket science. There are no silver bullets in this business. It’s a matter of understanding the problem, addressing the problem, and then implementing fixes.

“If you can’t win, then you’ve got to be scoring the points. Obviously, it’s not nice to be beaten by 22 seconds, but it just shows when you get things right in your car, in the window, as we saw earlier in the year, that kind of result is possible.

“So it doesn’t scare us. It just focuses the mind – we need to turn this around, we need to get it right.”

Horner admitted that Red Bull took got it wrong in giving Verstappen higher downforce spec at Zandvoort, which made him a sitting duck once Norris caught him.

“We took a little bit of a gamble because we thought that deg was going to be quite high,” he said.

“So we went up quite a lot on the downforce level, to maximum downforce. And that was a little bit of a gamble in that if the deg had been high, we felt it would help with the deg.

“As it turned out, the deg was low, very low, and it just made us slow on the straight line with Max. He did the hard part at the start and made a great start, and led obviously into the first corner, and was able to break the DRS.

“But pretty early on, you could see Lando was very comfortable. And then obviously passing pretty easy with the straight line deficit that we had, and the speed that he had.

“And then, to be honest with you, his pace thereafter, Max was just managing the race. The most important thing that we discussed before the race was if you can’t beat him, make sure that we beat the rest of the field.

“And I think at one point, we were concerned about Piastri coming up very quickly, passing Russell and then getting onto the back of Leclerc. But then he seemed to run out of pace, and we had that reasonably covered.”

Horner insisted that the team learned some lessons from the Dutch event.

“This weekend we’ve run the cars in different specifications, and I think that has actually given us quite a lot of valuable info,” he said. 

“I think the drivers’ feedback has been very positive into that as well, in terms of what they’re feeling from different setups. I think it hopefully now gives a real direction for the engineering group.”

Hamilton had a lot of work to do at Zandvoort

Lewis Hamilton says he “had a lot of fun” in the Dutch GP after charging from 14^th on the grid to eighth in a race that saw no retirements or safety car periods.

Hamilton had a difficult qualifying, earning only 12^th place in Q2 with an oversteering car, and then receiving a three-place grid penalty for impeding Sergio Perez.

He gained one grid place back from the exclusion of Alex Albon, but he had to do the rest of the work himself on Sunday by passing on track.

“I had a lot of fun today,” he said when asked by this writer about his race. “We planned to do a two-stop. We started on the soft, and the soft tyre I think was a very good tyre,

“It felt much better than my medium tyre in practice, and the hard tyre was feeling decent.

“It was really difficult to see kind of what I needed to do, whether to push for it. But I was on a two, so trying to use up the tyre, but also wasn’t sure whether or not we might possibly go for a one.

“I had a bit of a lock-up, which kind of then made me just stay on my normal strategy. Probably if I’d done one stop and managed a little bit better, I probably could have done a one, and maybe finished one spot ahead.”

Hamilton noted that his qualifying troubles resulted from making overnight changes and then not being able to properly evaluate them in FP3, due to a wet track and the red flag caused by Logan Sargeant’s accident.

“We made a big setup change going into P3 but then it was wet, so we didn’t even get to test it,” he said. “Got in the session, and it was very oversteering. And then today, I took out a bunch of wing and balanced it, it was fine.

“If I just qualified like I should have qualified, if I didn’t have the problem through qualifying, then I think I had the pace today to be definitely in the top five. If I’d I started fourth, for example, I would have finished at least fourth.”

His biggest disappointment was losing fastest lap to Lando Norris on the very last lap, having been assured by the team that the time he set earlier on soft tyres would be safe: “It’s insane how quick they were, really impressive. Twenty-two seconds to Max…”

Hamilton now heads to his first Italian GP since he was announced as a Ferrari driver, but he played down the significance.

“I look forward to next weekend because I had a shite weekend this weekend, and I’m looking forward to trying to do better next weekend!,” he said.

“I have no idea how we’ll be next week. Hopefully not worse than this week.”

Starts have been an issue for McLaren in 2024

McLaren Formula 1 boss Andrea Stella admits that improving starts is a priority for the team after another disappointing getaway from pole for Lando Norris in Zandvoort.

Despite the short run to Turn 1 both Norris and team mate Oscar Piastri dropped a place off the line, having had excessive wheelspin.

While Norris managed to pass Max Verstappen and win the race the bad start had a bigger impact on Piastri, who had to settle for fourth.

Stella acknowledged that starts remain a weakness for McLaren.

“The start is such a fundamental element to go racing,” he said when asked by this writer about the Zandvoort issues.

“It is as important as car performance, and we do have to look very carefully into the details about why our competitor seems to gain a little bit on us.

“I think statistically over the course of the season, we are competitive from a launch point of view, but we see that there’s some cars that Verstappen for instance, who seem to be performing very well at the start.

“And if you can capitalise a good qualifying performance with a good start, it makes your life so much easier. So definitely we have to look into this.

“And as I’ve already said, this comes from the driver in terms of their launch procedure, execution, and it comes from a team point of view, because there’s some aspects which are under the team’s control, and we need to look into what kind of optimisation we are able to do.”

Stella agreed that while Norris was able to recover the lead in Holland a bad start proved more expensive for Piastri.

“I think if with Oscar, we had not lost the position, I think it would be a different race, and Oscar had the pace to beat Max,” he said. “It’s a significant missed opportunity, I would say.

“At the same time, we approach this like any other opportunity you have, being it human performance, team performance or car performance, there’s just analysis, review, and then see what factors you have under your control that you have to you have to improve.”

At Zandvoort practice starts were only allowed from the grid after sessions, and not at the end of the pitlane, and wet weather created compromises. However, Stella didn’t blame that situation for the team’s issues.

“I’m not so sure, because obviously this would have been the same for all our competitors,” he said. “And it’s not that we are perfect anytime we have the end of pit lane starts allowed.

“I think there’s a wider theme around the performance of the launches and. And this is certainly a priority for the future McLaren.”

Norris suggested that the team had got something wrong on Sunday.

“We know what to do,” said the Dutch GP winner. “We know what’s required to do a perfect start. But we’re talking about fine margins here.

“Because we both didn’t get it right, it seems like maybe there was more underlying issue or something wasn’t how it was supposed to be, or we’ve clearly misjudged something more than what others did.

“Oscar’s one of the best starters on the grid. I’m not as good as him, but there or thereabouts. I’m not a bad starter, but not as good as obviously what we need to be.

“Again, it was a race which almost slipped away off the line, but today was, again, different to every other thing that’s happened.

“So, kind of like I said before the weekend, we need to find a bit more consistency, but we’ve worked on it, and I feel like I’ve done better procedurally, but obviously didn’t turn into the correct thing.”

Piastri had to settle for fourth at Zandvooort

An honest Oscar Piastri admits that he wasn’t at the same level as McLaren team mate Lando Norris in the Formula 1 Dutch GP, and adds that he’s “not being consistently good enough” this season.

The Australian qualified third at Zandvoort, but lost out to George Russell at the start, and got stuck behind the Mercedes driver.

After the stops he was caught behind Charles Leclerc, and he remained in fourth place to the chequered flag, having rarely had a clear lap. He crossed the line 27.3 seconds shy of dominant winner Norris.

On the in-lap Piastri told the team that it hadn’t been “a great weekend from myself,” and having apologised thanked them for a providing a quick car.

“I think just not being consistently good enough,” he said when asked by this writer to elaborate on his honest verdict. “I think there were definitely moments of the weekend where I felt very strong and very comfortable.

“It felt like Friday was pretty strong, especially over one lap, even qualifying was looking very strong, I just didn’t find enough on the last lap of qualifying. And that made life a bit painful, and accompanied by a bad start today really kind of set the tone for the afternoon.

“So when your teammate wins by 20 seconds clearly, there’s things to work on and improve.”

Regarding his frustrating Sunday he said: “I think realistically, it started with qualifying, just not being competitive enough when it mattered. The start obviously didn’t help things. It just kind of boxed us in a little bit.

“I think the pace in clean air was quite strong. And clearly the car was quick today, just I spent about 60 of the 70 laps within a second of the car in front. So that made life pretty painful.”

Piastri believes that he’ll be on better form in the upcoming Italian GP at the revamped Monza..

“I’ll try and make sure that I’m back in the game next week,” he said. “A very different track. This track was similar to Hungary, to Spain. I think we’ve been very quick at pretty much every circuit since Miami, I would say.

“So I’m not really concerned. I think Ferrari will probably be a bit quicker. In the past, that’s where they’ve been very strong. And today they had a quicker car than I think a lot of people expected. So I’m expecting them to be a bit more in the fight.

“It’s been resurfaced, and a few kerbs have been changed quite a lot. So I think it’ll be a bit of a learning curve for everybody, especially with new tarmac, because a lot of the tarmac there was very old. But I think we should be going to every weekend with the expectation of trying to win.”

Magnussen filled the team player role again, but rivals were not happy…

Alex Albon and Pierre Gasly have criticised Kevin Magnussen’s defensive driving as the Dane tried to help his Haas team mate Nico Hulkenberg in the Dutch GP.

Albon noted that there is not enough policing by the FIA when teams adopt “sacrificial lamb” tactics and use one driver to protect the other.

Magnussen started from the pitlane in Zandvoort, and drove a long opening stint on the hard tyre.

In the middle of the race he was running in 10^th place behind Hulkenberg, but unlike the German he was still due a pit stop, and was thus set to drop back.

When Albon closed up Magnussen successfully held him back for a couple of laps, with the Williams driving branding the situation “dangerous” on team radio.

Gasly and Aston Martin team mates Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll were able catch Albon, and eventually all four dived past the Haas driver at the same time. Magnussen pitted immediately afterwards.

His efforts to help Hulkenberg proved in vain as Gasly and Alonso bumped the German down to 11^th and out of the points.

Albon, who was held up by Magnussen in similar circumstances at the Saudi Arabian GP, made his frustration clear.

“It stems from, a little bit like Jeddah, playing the team game,” said Albon when asked about Magnussen by this writer.

“Kevin’s an unbelievable team player, and I give him full credit for it. I don’t think it gets policed that well, and there’s a bit of a grey area between what is correct in backing up a group of cars. In this case, for me, it was fairly marginal.

“There’s some really quick corners, Turn 7, Turn 8, the final corner, and he was braking in the middle of them. So you turn in flat, and then you have to stand on the brakes and avoid it. That’s I think, crossing the line a little bit. But it’s grey.

“And part of the issue is it’s not really being policed that often. And I had the same situation in Monaco with Yuki during the race, and I was complaining. But they felt it was okay. The problem is, at one point, there’s going to be a crash.”

Albon stressed how tight the battle for the final points positions now is.

“I said it before, but it all just stems from the lower field teams, we’re fighting for a point that P10, P9 is so valuable to us, and obviously now McLaren is up in the top end. It’s very normal.

“Every team does it now. There’s a lot of kind of one seat, one driver has to play the sacrificial lamb in the in the race, and that’s what a lot of the racing has come to now.

“Obviously, if the point system was a bit different and there’s a bit more range, I don’t think this kind of stuff would happen. But that’s the game.”

Gasly, who took advantage of the situation to dive past Albon and claim what turned into ninth place,

“I’ve never seen someone lifting in Turn 14, or putting first gear in Turn 12,” said the Frenchman. “I think Alex got very close to him. He locked up mid-corner Turn 12, when K-MAG was downshifting in first, when you should be almost full throttle.

“And then in 14, I opened the DRS, and all of a sudden, I don’t know what he was doing on the inside.

“It was quite clear what he was trying to do for Nico. In the end, I managed to get out on top of that group. At the time, I think my heartbeat was quite high, but I’m happy I managed to get out of there leading the pack.”

Russell ran third early on at Zandvoort before slipping back

George Russell says he doesn’t have any answers after a difficult race for Mercedes in Zandvoort saw him finish a distant seventh.

Russell made a good start from fourth and ran third in the early laps, but later he dropped back.

He made an extra second stop for soft tyres late in the race in an attempt to salvage something.

He finished 44 seconds behind winner Lando Norris, and just ahead of team mate Lewis Hamilton, who worked his way up from 14th, also with a two-stop strategy.

“I probably would have finished one, maybe max, two positions higher, but we just had no pace,” said Russell when asked by this writer about the extra stop.

“I was just dropping like a stone. I was especially quite surprised versus Ferrari, we were expecting to be comfortably ahead of them.

“And Charles [Leclerc] was quicker, Carlos [Sainz] was catching me. Clearly, we got something wrong I think with the tyres just out of bed.”

Russell admitted that he was initially upbeat having beaten Oscar Piastri off the line and grabbed third spot.

“After the first couple of laps I thought we were on course for probably a podium here,” he said. “I knew the overtaking was going to be difficult. I was really shocked at how fast McLaren were.

“Lando just looked so comfortable out there, and it was super impressive to see. We’ve had six really strong races, and then suddenly we’ve finished almost a minute behind the win today.

“So you don’t lose all of that performance overnight. Yesterday, we qualified fourth, and clearly didn’t get something right today.

“Honestly, right now I’m still scratching my head. It was very tough conditions, with this wind, with the long corners. Right now, I don’t have the answers.”