{"id":854761,"date":"2026-08-14T08:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T08:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/854761\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T08:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T08:26:10","slug":"exclusive-max-verstappen-makes-zandvoort-promise-ahead-of-f1-swansong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/854761\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Max Verstappen makes Zandvoort promise ahead of F1 swansong"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Max Verstappen says he does not have any &#8220;extra motivation&#8221; to perform well during the upcoming Dutch Grand Prix &#8211; Zandvoort&#8217;s last race in F1 for the foreseeable future.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Next weekend&#8217;s race will be the sixth GP since Zandvoort&#8217;s return in 2021, but the Dutch GP is to fall off the calendar for 2027, with the Turkish and Portuguese Grands Prix returning whilst the Barcelona-Catalunya GP enters bi-annual rotation with the Belgian GP.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Of the five previous races at the coastal circuit, Verstappen won the first three from pole position and has finished second in both 2024 and 2025, with his average finishing position of 1.4 being the second-best of his career.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Only counting races with multiple starts, thus discounting the one-off 70th Anniversary Grand Prix of 2020, Verstappen&#8217;s Zandvoort record is only behind his average finishing position of 1 at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, where he won four of the five races held between 2020-2022, and 2024-2025, only retiring in &#8217;20.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Zandvoort&#8217;s swansong on the calendar comes with a Sprint race for the first time, but the 71-time grand prix winner does not feel any extra motivation to perform well in front of his home crowd one last time.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I never have any extra motivation because that would be bad,&#8221; Verstappen exclusively told RacingNews365 ahead of the final Dutch GP.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Then it means I&#8217;m not motivated enough for the other ones to do well, so I always just want to do a good job. I love driving there.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve had a lot of incredible support and results at the same time, so I&#8217;m just looking forward to it and enjoying the weekend, but it might disappear off the F1 calendar.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But the track is still there, right? And if I want to drive there, I can. So yeah, for me, okay, maybe not in a Formula 1 setting, but I mean, I will be there anyway, even after Formula 1.&#8221;\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen says he does not have any &#8220;extra motivation&#8221; to perform well during the upcoming Dutch Grand&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":833795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-854761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}