Formula 1’s 2026 Zandvoort sprint race could have been mistaken for a car parade rather than an actual race, as George Russell won from\u00a0pole\u00a0and only two changes of position happened in the top 10 over the 24 laps.<\/p>\n
Lando Norris managed to keep Russell under pressure for the first stretch of the\u00a0race but over laps nine and 10 he lost over a second to Russell with\u00a0a tail-happy rear-end. That allowed Russell the breathing room he needed.<\/p>\n
The only uncertainty was late rain, which hit almost immediately\u00a0after Russell crossed the line.\u00a0The\u00a0perfect start for his bid to turn\u00a0around his\u00a0tough first part of\u00a0the\u00a0season.<\/p>\n
The change of position in the top 10 at the start came when Kimi Antonelli jumped Oscar Piastri\u2019s McLaren and\u00a0set about\u00a0chasing Charles Leclerc for the last spot on the podium.<\/p>\n
As if doing the fans a favour by anticipating the turgid race, Leclerc added a grain of interest by bolting on soft tyres – alongside only 17th-place starter Ollie Bearman – which theoretically gave him a chance at making up early positions before degrading later on.<\/p>\n
But with Norris ahead struggling a third of the way through with a loose rear, Leclerc was able to pressure him and on\u00a0lap\u00a018 he dived to the inside at Turn 1, pushing Norris wide and barging through for the only meaningful overtake of the race not happening\u00a0at the start.<\/p>\n
Leclerc wasn’t able to catch Russell but avoided his softs\u00a0going off\u00a0dramatically at the end to seal second.<\/p>\n
Norris immediately came under pressure from Antonelli once Leclerc\u00a0went through, and\u00a0Antonelli tried\u00a0all the way up\u00a0until the last lap when he\u00a0half-tried a Turn 1 dive,\u00a0but couldn\u2019t make it stick and had to settle for fourth.<\/p>\n
Piastri was a very distant fifth, dropped by Antonelli, while an intriguing battle between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton – a regular occurrence in 2026 F1.<\/p>\n
Hamilton dropped as far as two seconds behind at mid-race,\u00a0having been close early on, but Hamilton closed back in during the closing stages, typically of this race, unable to make a move stick.<\/p>\n
Pierre Gasly was under pressure for the entire race, but his upgraded Alpine yielded the final point for eighth ahead of Gabriel Bortoleto\u2019s Audi.<\/p>\n
Arvid Lindblad claimed another scalp as the Racing Bulls driver beat his usual team-mate Liam Lawson, who\u2019s standing in for Isack Hadjar this weekend at Red Bull.<\/p>\n
But before you condemn Lawson, remember the difficulty in overtaking in this race.<\/p>\n
Yuki Tsunoda lost out to Franco Colapinto at the start, perhaps that could be put down to Tsunoda doing his first-ever race start with the complicated process required for 2026 cars.<\/p>\n
So Colapinto – without the Alpine upgrade – took 12th ahead of Tsunoda.<\/p>\n
Dutch GP sprint race results George Russell (Mercedes)Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +1.3sLando Norris (McLaren) +5.1sKimi Antonelli (Mercedes) +5.5sOscar Piastri (McLaren) +10.1sMax Verstappen (Red Bull) +10.5sLewis Hamilton (Ferrari) +12.1sPierre Gasly (Alpine) +42.5sGabriel Bortoleto (Audi) +44.4sArvid Lindblad (Racing Bulls) +44.9sLiam Lawson (Red Bull) +47.4sFranco Colapinto (Alpine) +54.4sYuki Tsunoda (Racing Bulls) +56.4sEsteban Ocon (Haas) +66.0sOllie Bearman (Haas) +66.5sAlex Albon (Williams) +74.6sLance Stroll (Aston Martin) +74.6sFernando Alonso (Aston Martin) +75.2sValtteri Bottas (Cadillac) +1 lapCarlos Sainz (Williams) +1 lapSergio Perez (Cadillac) +3 lapsNico Hulkenberg (Audi) +17 laps<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Formula 1’s 2026 Zandvoort sprint race could have been mistaken for a car parade rather than an actual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":864374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-864373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864373","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=864373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}