{"id":864809,"date":"2026-08-22T21:44:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T21:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/864809\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T21:44:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T21:44:11","slug":"dutch-grand-prix-f1-news-2026-oscar-piastri-qualifies-fourth-as-lando-norris-takes-pole-george-russell-wins-sprint-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/864809\/","title":{"rendered":"Dutch Grand Prix F1 News 2026: Oscar Piastri qualifies fourth as Lando Norris takes pole; George Russell wins sprint race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lando Norris<\/a> found unexpected pace to beat his rivals and the weather to take pole position for the Dutch Grand Prix on Sunday after George Russell<\/a> took a sprint race win on Formula 1\u2019s<\/a> return from its mid-season break.<\/p>\n

As rain started to fall on the Zandvoort track, McLaren\u2019s Norris made the most of his final run to reclaim pole by 0.102 of a second from Russell, whose Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli<\/a> \u2014 the standings leader \u2014 was third.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri of McLaren. \u00a0Clive Mason<\/p>\n

Aussie Oscar Piastri<\/a> spent much of Q1 and Q2 leading the pack, but ultimately fell short in the battle for pole, qualifying fourth.<\/p>\n

Norris said he found himself somewhat surprised by his own performance. <\/p>\n

\u201cA little surprised, honestly, but a decent lap,\u201d said Norris, who\u2019d been critical of his car in the earlier sprint race and credited McLaren with making the right changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to try something because what we had before wasn\u2019t going to be enough,\u201d he said, adding the changes were small but \u201cenough to give me some confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Norris won the last race in Hungary on July 27, but was deflated after the sprint, saying McLaren wasn\u2019t competitive at all in slower corners.<\/p>\n

Russell is rebuilding his title challenge after losing ground to Antonelli last month and said it was \u201ca real joy\u201d to drive in qualifying. The plan now is to \u201cget in my groove again and try to fight with them tomorrow,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Lewis Hamilton lost ground to Antonelli in the standings in the sprint race. His difficult day continued with fifth in qualifying.<\/p>\n

The sprint race was a display of domination from Russell, who started from pole position, quickly built a gap to Norris in second and managed the pace from there, taking his first win since the Austrian Grand Prix in June.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously a great start to the weekend,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Charles Leclerc snatched second off Norris with a daring pass into the inside of the first corner with six laps to go, but couldn\u2019t get close enough to try passing Russell.<\/p>\n

Norris held off a late charge from Antonelli to stay third as the Italian pulled out of a potential overtaking move on the final lap.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just don\u2019t have the pace in general, especially in the slow-speed corners,\u201d Norris said.<\/p>\n

Fourth-place Antonelli, starting fifth after car damage in qualifying, still managed to extend his standings lead by three more points to 53 because Hamilton could only manage seventh for Ferrari.<\/p>\n

F1 still hasn\u2019t had a wet race this year but came tantalisingly close as rain fell as the drivers were heading back to the pits, seconds after the sprint finished.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there was one more lap it would have been a very, potentially, different end to the race so I\u2019m glad the rain came when it did,\u201d Russell said.<\/p>\n

While it stayed dry, overtaking was difficult, even in a year where the cars\u2019 electrical power has made back-and-forth passes common. The overtakes by Leclerc and Antonelli were the only changes of position anywhere in the top 11 finishers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris found unexpected pace to beat his rivals and the weather to take pole position for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":864810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-864809","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\/864809","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=864809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}