{"id":578125,"date":"2026-08-23T20:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T20:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/578125\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T20:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T20:04:09","slug":"dutch-grand-prix-harry-benjamins-driver-ratings-as-lando-norris-wins-for-mclaren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/578125\/","title":{"rendered":"Dutch Grand Prix: Harry Benjamin&#8217;s driver ratings as Lando Norris wins for McLaren"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Yuki Tsunoda &#8211; 7\/10<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Thrown back into a race seat at short notice and looked increasingly comfortable as the weekend went on. Just missed the points in 11th and was only a fraction away from Gasly in qualifying after months without racing in Formula 1.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Arvid Lindblad &#8211; 6.5\/10<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The raw pace was very good &#8211; 10th in both qualifying sessions was another impressive showing from the rookie. But failing to slow sufficiently for yellow flags and having to serve a drive-through effectively ended his hopes of points on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gabriel Bortoleto &#8211; 6.5\/10<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Quick throughout Saturday and put Audi ninth on the grid for the grand prix. His opening-lap spin dropped him towards the back, though, and turned what had looked like another points opportunity into a recovery drive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Franco Colapinto &#8211; 5\/10<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Showed reasonable pace but never looked quite capable of joining Gasly in the points fight. The yellow-flag penalty on Sunday made an already difficult race even harder.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sergio Perez &#8211; 4\/10<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A weekend in which almost nothing went right. Problems delayed his sprint, he qualified last for the grand prix and then started from the pit lane before finishing two laps down.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Carlos Sainz &#8211; 3.5\/10<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Trouble from the very first practice session, where his excursions damaged the Williams floor, and things never really improved. Starting 17th was poor and the late collision with Albon, for which he was penalised, capped a miserable weekend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Alex Albon &#8211; 5.5\/10<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Williams simply wasn&#8217;t competitive around Zandvoort and Albon spent the weekend in the lower reaches of the order. His retirement wasn&#8217;t really of his own making after the late contact with Sainz, who was penalised for the collision.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Valtteri Bottas &#8211; 4.5\/10<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Again comfortably ahead of Perez in the grand prix grid but Cadillac remained rooted towards the back. His race eventually ended with a hydraulic problem, leaving little opportunity to improve on a difficult weekend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Esteban Ocon &#8211; 6\/10<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Quiet but had the better of Haas team-mate Bearman throughout qualifying and the sprint. His grand prix ended through a car problem rather than driver error, so there wasn&#8217;t much more he could have done on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lance Stroll &#8211; 4.5\/10<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Aston Martin&#8217;s improved result came entirely from the other side of the garage. Stroll did beat Alonso in the sprint but qualified behind him for the grand prix before damage eventually forced his retirement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Oliver Bearman &#8211; 4.5\/10<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A difficult weekend before Sunday had even begun, with Bearman out-qualified by Ocon in both formats. His grand prix was then effectively over before it restarted when the Haas stopped with a technical problem on the formation lap.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Max Verstappen &#8211; 5\/10<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Red Bull was clearly not giving Verstappen the machinery to fight the leading cars and sixth in the sprint and seventh in qualifying appeared about the limit. But crashing out on the opening lap of his home grand prix was a major mistake and has to heavily outweigh the decent work he had done beforehand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yuki Tsunoda &#8211; 7\/10 Thrown back into a race seat at short notice and looked increasingly comfortable as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-578125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}