The 2025 Dutch Grand Prix had a lot of drama. Despite multiple crashes and safety cars, Oscar Piastri maintained his lead from start to finish. With this, he extends his lead in the Drivers’ Championship, as McLaren maintain their great lead in the Constructors’.
In fact, it was the dream start for pole sitter Piastri, as he kept first place off the line. Behind him, Max Verstappen raced past the other McLaren, taking second position from Lando Norris. Norris arguably got the best start of all, but lost out in the opening corners to settle into P3. Verstappen almost crashed in the early stages, veering away from the racing line and hitting some dust on track, but managed to keep the car under enough control to stay in the race.
With rain reported soon, discussions were had by the commentators and on social media surrounding how teams would deal with this. Many argued that the Red Bulls, on soft tyres, would be helped in the rain initially by their tyre choice, since the soft tyre maintains a higher heat better.
The Ferraris looked fast, each challenging those ahead but unable to pass at this point. Isack Hadjar, after a stunning qualifying performance, kept up the pace in P4, just in front of Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari.
Further back, Gabriel Bortoleto had an awful start , dropping six positions. He had a scuffle with Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin early on and fell back to run in P19. This contact damaged his front wing and left debris on track. A virtual safety car was brought out due to this. Only the Haas of Ollie Bearman was behind Bortoleto following this incident. Franco Colapinto gained a position further back in the field.
At lap 8, the most exciting fight was the battle for fourth between the RB of Hadjar, the Ferrari of Leclerc and George Russell in his Mercedes. Russell dropped back slightly, slipping out of DRS range, but was still in the fight. This was ongoing, with Leclerc constantly challenging Hadjar.
Fighting for the podium positions, Norris pulled off a decisive move on Verstappen to retake second. Over the radio, his engineer made their goal clear, outlining Piastri in first as their target. Norris used McLaren’s clear advantage at turn one to achieve this overtake. He was able to speed away from the Red Bull, getting him out of DRS range within two laps. At this point he was still over four seconds adrift of Piastri.
Kimi Antonelli was chasing Yuki Tsunoda, hunting down 11th position. He is further back than his teammate Russell who remained at this stage in sixth behind Leclerc and just ahead of his ex-teammate Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton was right up to Russell here; within DRS range, but not quite able to overtake yet.
Leclerc broke the deadlock in this fight coming into the pit. At the same time, his teammate Hamilton crashed causing a safety car. He ran wide following a snap of oversteer at the end of the camber on track. He hit the barriers on the right of the track. McLaren took the opportunity to double stack under the safety car, deciding to pit both cars to maximise their advantage. Nearly all of the top ten then followed into the pitlane, except Leclerc who was left trundling along at the safety car delta. He lost position, dropping back behind Russell.
Further back, Carlos Sainz came together with Liam Lawson. This was quite a large crash. Sainz ended up with a puncture on his Williams as well as front wing damage, while Lawson lost his entire back left tyre. While Sainz blamed Lawson for the collision over the radio, the stewards awarded him a 10 second penalty.
Fernando Alonso had an interesting race. After an awful start where be lost four places, he found himself stuck in a DRS trains behind Tsunoda and the two Haas cars. Begging the pit land for a strategy change, he pitted for a set of hard tyres and raced back to the pack. On this new set of tyres, Alonso was able to run the fastest lap of the race so far. He rejoined the back of the DRS train, pushing the back markers into a race for their positions.
At lap 54 there was a huge crash. Antonelli came together with Leclerc, sending the Ferrari spinning into the barriers. Antonelli lost a wheel to this collision and had a mini fire in his body work. This ended Leclerc’s race. A second safety car was deployed to combat this incident. Leclerc retired while still under investigation for his earlier collision with Russell. Antonelli received a 10 second penalty for causing the collision.
McLaren yet again capitalised on crashes, pitting both drivers for new hard tyres. At this point, a McLaren 1-2 looked extremely likely as Verstappen was not challenging Norris for P2 and Piastri was clear.
Out of nowhere, Norris complained over the radio about a burning smell coming from his car. We then saw that great plumes of smoke were coming out of his car. After his engineer asked if he could at least trundle the car back to the pit lane, Norris replied that he couldn’t go on and parked his car at the side of the track. This was Norris out of the race. With this retirement, the gap to Piastri in the Drivers’ Championship rises to 34 points. This is obviously presents a much harder challenge for Norris since the deficit is much higher now, but it is not an impossible number of points to make up in the nine remaining races. He may need a lot of luck in his side, and for Piastri to be stuck by much misfortune for the remainder of the season, but Norris is still in with a good shot at winning the overall championship.
To end the race, another collision took place, this time between Pierre Gasly (Alpine) and RB’s Tsunoda. This sent Gasly plummeting down the order to be the last qualifying finisher of the race.
While Piastri’s win solidifies his lead in the championship fight, the story of the weekend is Isack Hadjar. A podium for a rookie in an RB is a great surprise. From not starting the first race of the season due to a crash to a podium in the first race back after the summer shut down, the young driver has shown great progression over the course of the year.
Looking on to the coming week, where Formula One heads to Italy, Ferrari has the most questions to answer. A double DNF will not go down well with their fans right before their home race. Norris also needs improvement. Reliability issues plagued his race this week, so he must ensure that no error of his jeopardises future races if he wants to remain in the title fight. Piastri is starting to run away with the championship, but as this race showed, one DNF and the fight can look entirely different. As for Hadjar, will this excellent result spur him on to even higher positions? See you again next weekend!
Written and edited by Alexandra.
Featured image credit: GETTY IMAGES via bbc.co.uk
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