As the Dutch GP leaves the Formula 1 calendar, McLaren’s recovery is becoming clear. Norris took a second consecutive victory, looking more mature than last season and again showing why he is the reigning World Champion. The Mercedes pair completed the podium, with Antonelli extending his championship lead over Russell and Hamilton to 59 points.
The race was less processional than expected, despite how difficult overtaking remains at Zandvoort. Verstappen’s crash just after the opening lap caused a red flag and, at the restart, Antonelli took the lead from Norris. Their fuel-corrected pace in the first stint was very similar, moving from the low 1:13s towards the high 1:14s, despite Norris running Softs and Antonelli Mediums. Russell was generally three to six tenths slower, but recovered the position lost to Piastri through an early stop and McLaren’s slow pit stop. On the Hard, Norris gradually reduced the gap, but the decisive advantage came from the second pit-stop offset: Antonelli stopped on lap 41, while Norris waited until lap 48 and rejoined on tires seven laps fresher. In only three laps, the gap fell from more than five seconds to around 1.4 before Norris passed around the outside of Turn 1 on lap 54. The following VSC allowed Antonelli to switch to Softs, while Russell stayed out on Hards and retained track position. Mercedes later inverted the cars, with Russell remaining strong enough through Sector 3 to defend into Turn 1 and protect third place.
Ferrari finished fourth and fifth, but their Sunday pace was much stronger than their third-row qualifying positions had suggested. The ranking plot places Ferrari’s median around 1:16.3, in the same overall range as Mercedes and McLaren, although with a slightly wider spread. The violin plot also shows substantial overlap between Hamilton and Leclerc and the leading drivers. However, both plots aggregate laps completed on different compounds, at different tire ages and in different race phases: they show that Ferrari were competitive, but not that the underlying pace was identical. Nor can they isolate grid position, traffic and time spent following another car. Starting from the third row, both Ferraris spent much of the race in traffic: Leclerc lost a position at the restart and later had a slow stop, while Hamilton used a longer first stint to move back ahead. Both switched to Softs under the VSC, but rejoined behind Russell and could not convert the tire advantage into a pass. Hamilton finished only 0.8s from the podium, with Leclerc 1.3s behind Russell. P4 and P5 therefore hide how close Ferrari were, while showing why competitive lap-time distributions do not automatically become track position.
