session-ending crash in FP2<\/a> on Friday, this time he managed to limp back to the pits where the Aston Martin team assessed the damage.<\/p>\nBack out on track, the laps were coming in thick and fast and, once everyone barring Stroll had set a time, Norris had again gone quickest via his effort of 1m 09.469s, just over one-tenth clear of team mate Piastri.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, with a few minutes left on the clock, the drivers at risk in the elimination zone were Bortoleto, Tsunoda, Colapinto, Ocon and Stroll. The latter would seemingly not be returning to action, having climbed out of his car in the garage.<\/p>\n
With grid position crucial at the tight Zandvoort Circuit, a flurry of lap times went on the board as the clock ticked down towards the end of Q1. Piastri improved to beat Norris by 0.131s, while Leclerc was attempting to better his own effort after finding himself on the bubble in P15.<\/p>\n
The Monegasque managed to move up to ninth, before Lawson put in an eye-catching performance to climb up to fifth. Colapinto initially escaped the danger zone, only to be pushed down to 16th, while Bortoleto just made it through in 15th place.<\/p>\n
The Brazilian\u2019s team mate Hulkenberg was not so lucky, exiting in P17, while Haas had a disappointing day as Ocon and Bearman were eliminated in P18 and P19 respectively. Stroll ended the session in P20, having been unable to rejoin following his earlier incident.<\/p>\n
Knocked out: Colapinto, Hulkenberg, Ocon, Bearman, Stroll<\/p>\n
Q2 \u2013 Norris returns to the top<\/p>\n
Ferrari were the first to head out as Q2 began, with Hamilton and Leclerc initially having the track to themselves. Leclerc spotted something unusual along the way, the driver from Monaco reporting that he had seen a fox at Turn 10 \u2013 which fortunately appeared to have escaped unharmed.<\/p>\n
The rest of the field joined the fray a few minutes later and Verstappen pleased the home fans by putting in an early benchmark of 1m 09.122s \u2013 half a second clear of nearest challenger Antonelli \u2013 only for Norris to beat that with a 1m 08.874s, an effort that Piastri was 0.090s adrift from when he completed his own lap.<\/p>\n
Verstappen, meanwhile, was left unhappy after encountering Norris \u2013 seemingly attempting to keep off the racing line \u2013 out on track. But in terms of the order, the names in trouble were Alonso, Lawson, Sainz, Bortoleto and Gasly.<\/p>\n
The action picked up again as the second runs got underway, and Gasly was one of the first to lift himself out of the elimination zone to 10th \u2013 only to then be pushed down by Sainz moving up to eighth. Albon in the sister Williams could not improve, though, having been dropped down to P13, sparking an unhappy reaction from the Thai driver over the radio.<\/p>\n
Lawson, on the other hand, again progressed to the top 10 in P8 while Alonso climbed up to P7. All of these moves resulted in Antonelli dropping to P11, with Tsunoda in P12 from Bortoleto and Gasly, while Albon ultimately ended up down in P15.<\/p>\n
Knocked out: Antonelli, Tsunoda, Bortoleto, Gasly, Albon<\/p>\n
Q3 \u2013 Piastri edges out Norris for pole<\/p>\n
After each topping one of the previous segments, Q3 saw Norris and Piastri hit the track early \u2013 and this time it was Piastri who snatched provisional pole, the Australian pumping in a 1m 08.662s.<\/p>\n
When Norris crossed the line, the Briton was a mere 0.012s off his team mate, highlighting the fine margins at play in the battle. Russell, meanwhile, initially proved to be their closest challenger before Verstappen came through to put his Red Bull into third place.<\/p>\n
The Ferrari pair of Hamilton and Leclerc followed in P5 and P6, while Hadjar, Alonso, Sainz and Lawson completed the order after the opening runs. But how would things play out as focus switched to the final decisive runs?<\/p>\n
This time it was Norris out on track ahead of Piastri, leading to a thrilling sequence as Piastri bettered his first sector while Norris improved in the second \u2013 but ultimately neither driver improved on their previous time, handing Piastri pole position.<\/p>\n
Verstappen caught the attention by going quickest of all in second sector, but the Dutchman\u2019s final lap time put him in third, ahead of an impressive Hadjar in a career-best fourth for Racing Bulls.<\/p>\n
Russell claimed fifth ahead of the Ferrari pair of Leclerc and Hamilton, with Lawson, Sainz and Alonso rounding out the top 10 in Zandvoort.<\/p>\n
Key quote<\/p>\n
“That was the definition of peaking at the right time,” said Piastri. “I think the whole weekend, I’ve felt pretty good, but there’s just been a couple corners that I’ve not been able to go any faster and I didn’t really go any faster in those corners, but I found some more elsewhere. Super happy to come away with the result. Obviously still got all the points tomorrow, but it was looking like a little bit of a tricky weekend so far so to come away with that, I’m pretty stoked.”<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next<\/p>\n
The 2025 Dutch Grand Grand Prix is set to begin at 1500 local time on Sunday. Head to the RACE HUB<\/a> to find out how you can catch the action from Zandvoort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri has sealed pole position for the Dutch Grand Prix after beating McLaren team mate Lando Norris…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-104010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}