@Max33Verstappen clinches 10th victory of season at home #DutchGP. #F1

Verstappen Dutch GP victory – Home favourite Max Verstappen took his 30th-career victory at the Dutch GP ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, after late safety car drama.

 

 

Although Verstappen won from pole position and at first looked to have Leclerc easily covered, Mercedes’ race pace brought it into contention with a one-stop vs Red Bull’s planned two-stopper.

 

This gave Sir Lewis Hamilton a whiff of an unlikely victory chance before he initially lost that and regained it due to dramatic virtual and full safety cars close to the end of the Grand Prix.

 

When the 72-lap Dutch GP began, with thick cloud hovering over the Circuit Zandvoort, pole-sitter Verstappen quickly covered Leclerc who had a look into the inside of the Red Bull at the opening corner.

 

 

However, the Ferrari was not close enough to make the move, whilst behind, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and Hamilton tangled slightly as the Silver Arrows gained ground significantly around the inside at Tarzan Hairpin.

 

The field made it through the opening sequences of corners with no problems, with Hamilton the only frontrunning driver to run the low line at the banked turn three Hugenholtz Corner.

 

Verstappen pushed his advantage to get out of DRS range to Leclerc by the end of lap two, with Leclerc going from 1.5 seconds behind two tours to only a second behind his title-rival over the next few laps.

 

But just as it appeared as if Leclerc might be able to gain DRS assistance, Verstappen managed to find some extra pace in the low 1:16’s bracket to re-establish his lead.

 

The two leaders were the only drivers running in the 1:16’s, with Sainz soon dropping far behind team-mate Leclerc and with Hamilton close behind, the highest placed pilot running the C2 yellow side-walled medium compound compared to the C3 red=marked softs used by the front-three.

 

As the Grand Prix settled, Verstappen increased his gap to Leclerc, his advantage rising steadily close to three seconds before reaching five before Ferrari pitted the Monegasque driver at the end of the 17^th tour.

 

Red Bull reacted on the following lap and despite his similar pit-stop service to go from softs to mediums being almost a second slower than Ferrari’s, Verstappen re-joined with his gap barely touched given his in- and out-lap pace.

 

The front-two pitting let Hamilton run loose in the lead on his initial stint on the medium rubber, with team-mate Russell having started on the same tyre and battled with McLaren’s Lando Norris once DRS was activated after the MCL36 jumped the Silver Arrow at the beginning of the race.

 

Verstappen and Leclerc used their fresh mediums to good use and pushed back towards the two F1 W13 entries over the next stage of proceedings, with the Red Bull, which had been almost nine seconds adrift of Hamilton’s lead when he returned from the pits, reaching DRS range behind Russell on the 27^th tour.

 

But at the start of the following tour, Verstappen used DRS to fly behind the Mercedes and zoomed into second place on the outside run into the Tarzan Hairpin.

 

Before Verstappen could close in on Hamilton, Mercedes brought in the seven-time world champion to take the C1 white-branded harder tyres at the end of the 29^th tour, an attempt to finish the Grand Prix on a one-stop strategy.

 

With the home favourite handed P1 back and saying he was not interested in running the harder rubber, Hamilton emerged in a net-fourth place behind the second RB18 of Sergio Perez, as Sainz fell out of contention due to a disastrous Ferrari pit-stop shortly before Leclerc stopped for the initial time.

 

As Verstappen began his charge that would double his gap over the Ferrari and be 10 seconds clear shortly after the mid-way point of the race, whilst Hamilton and Russell used their harder compounds to quickly pull in Perez.

 

On the 36^th tour, Hamilton used DRS assistance to attack on the outside line of Perez at the Tarzan Hairpin, with the latter locking up on the inside and aggressively running the Mercedes wide before Hamilton pulled out.

 

Hamilton tried again on the entry of turn eleven to the Circuit Zandvoort’s stadium, but was again resisted on the outside line, but the next time by into Tarzan, the Briton was able to run around the outside to take third place.

 

But there was immediate danger when a lapped Aston Martin of Sebastian Vettel came out from the pits just in-front of the duo and remained ahead for several corners, which meant Perez could mob Hamilton but was unable to pass when Vettel eventually allowed them by, as the German was hit with a five-second timed penalty for his actions.

 

Hamilton chased off after Leclerc and Verstappen, who had changed his mind about the durability of his C2 medium tyres and Red Bull considered hards for his second pit-stop, which it gave to Perez on the 40^th tour, just after Russell had also overtaken him into the first corner.

 

Ferrari realised Leclerc would have no defence against the charging Silver Arrows pairing and he also came in for a set of hards by the end of the 45^th lap, by at this time Hamilton had gone from almost 20 seconds behind Verstappen to not much above half that.

 

But at around the same time, the Grand Prix changed dramatically when AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda came to a halt in the middle of the turn 4/5 rapid sequence, initially worried his wheels were not properly attached after his second pit-stop at the back in the field.

 

The Japanese driver got going again and returned to the pits where the Faenza-based squad spent 30 seconds checking something inside his cockpit – possibly his seat belts – before he emerged, but then did stop at turn four saying he thought the differential of his AT03 racer was broken.

 

This meant the virtual safety car was deployed and Red Bull could then bring Verstappen in for harder tyres with a cheap stop, which preserved his race lead.

 

It remained exactly the same as Mercedes who also used the temporary virtual safety car to put Hamilton and Russell back onto the mediums – the former recognising the VSC had “stuffed” his previous push on the one-stop strategy.

 

When the action went green on lap 50, Verstappen and the Mercedes moved into the 1:14’s range, with Hamilton facing a 12.6 second gap and Leclerc back to fourth after losing out having made his stop before the deployment of the virtual safety car.

 

Over the next couple of tours, Hamilton cut the gap to 11.4 seconds before the race was massively changed again when the full safety car was brought out after Valtteri Bottas’s Alfa Romeo pulled over just before Tarzan Hairpin on the main-straight.

 

Red Bull then brought Verstappen in to return back to the harder compounds and the two Mercedes remained out – whilst most others – including Leclerc opted to put on the C3 red-marked softs.

 

The next time round, Russell demanded Mercedes put on the softs as he was losing tyre temperatures in his mediums at low-speed, which allowed Verstappen to go back into second behind Hamilton who stayed on the mediums.

 

The race went back to green on the 61^st tour, where Verstappen was all over Hamilton’s gearbox as they flew down the main-straight and he easily slip-streamed passed to re-claim the lead.

 

Verstappen flew to a 1.7 second lead at the end of the first lap back to race-speed, with Hamilton furious at his Mercedes team about it’s decision to leave him on the medium rubber.

 

His pace was off-par, as Russell who had seen off Leclerc’s push around the outside of Tarzan Hairpin at the restart, was able to rapidly close in and pass his Mercedes team-mate, although not before they almost came together running down the main-straight when Russell had DRS assistance.

 

Hamilton was then overtaken by Leclerc to drop off the podium, still sending angry messages to his team over the radio about his final tyre strategy, whilst Verstappen crossed the line to claim his 30-th career victory at his home Dutch GP by 4.071 seconds over Russell.

 

Sainz settled for fifth place having comeback into the battle and got in-front of Perez during the virtual safety car and safety car drama, but the Spaniard was relegated to eighth in the final classification due to an unsafe release into the path of Alpine’s Fernando Alonso at their final pit-stops during the Bottas stoppage-caused race stabilisation.

 

This meant, Perez, Alonso and Norris were promoted to fifth-seventh positions respectively, with Sainz also having to explain post-race an incident with ninth-placed Alpine of Esteban Ocon, where the Ferrari looked to have overtaken the A522 racer under yellow flag conditions when Bottas came to a halt.

 

This followed Sainz’s first pit-stop blunder when the Scuderia did not have all his medium tyres ready in time and Perez, behind the Spaniard in the opening stint after starting fifth, running over and breaking Ferrari’s wheel gun that had been left in his path in the tight pit-lane.

 

Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll completed the top ten and ahead of AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly who was 11^th and Williams Racing’s Alexander Albon who took 12^th.

 

Haas F1 Team’s Mick Schumacher placed 13^th in the order and in-front of German compatriot Vettel who came 14^th for Aston Martin as the other Haas VF-22 entry of Kevin Magnussen ended the Grand Prix in 15^th.

 

Alfa Romeo’s sole-running Zhou Guanyu settled for 16^th in the classification and ahead of McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo who finished where he started in 17^th place whilst Williams Racing’s Nicholas Latifi brought up the rear and a lap down from the lead.

 

The aforementioned Bottas and Tsunoda were the only retirees of the race.

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2022 Dutch GP – The Top Three

 

 

2022 Dutch GP Winner – Max Verstappen, #1, Oracle Red Bull Racing-RBPT, RB18:

“Not a straightforward race, we had to push the whole race. VSC, Safety Car, making the right calls, it worked out really well. I had a good run on the restart, I had a bit more top speed to attack into Turn 1. We timed it really well out of the last corner, the draft was really strong.”

 

2^nd Place – George Russell, #63, Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team, F1 W13 E Performance:

“Really special feeling to be racing in Zandvoort. As a team today we showed incredible pace, this gives us a lot of confidence moving forward. We are slowly getting closer to that top step, so let’s keep pushing.”

 

3^rd Place – Charles Leclerc, #16, Scuderia Ferrari, F1-75:

“We were a little unlucky with the VSC, I don’t know if it would have changed anything, but Max was too quick today. Lewis was struggling on a used set, so we managed to overtake him, it wasn’t easy, but we made it stick. The gap [to Verstappen] is really big.”

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Formula 1 Heineken Dutch Grand Prix 2022 Race Results Classification (72 Laps)

 

POS	NO	DRIVER	CAR	LAPS	TIME/RETIRED	PTS
1	1	Max Verstappen	RED BULL RACING RBPT	72	1:36:42.773	26
2	63	George Russell	MERCEDES	72	+4.071s	18
3	16	Charles Leclerc	FERRARI	72	+10.929s	15
4	44	Lewis Hamilton	MERCEDES	72	+13.016s	12
5	11	Sergio Perez	RED BULL RACING RBPT	72	+18.168s	10
6	14	Fernando Alonso	ALPINE RENAULT	72	+18.754s	8
7	4	Lando Norris	MCLAREN MERCEDES	72	+19.306s	6
8	55	Carlos Sainz	FERRARI	72	+20.916s	4
9	31	Esteban Ocon	ALPINE RENAULT	72	+21.117s	2
10	18	Lance Stroll	ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES	72	+22.459s	1
11	10	Pierre Gasly	ALPHATAURI RBPT	72	+27.009s	0
12	23	Alexander Albon	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	72	+30.390s	0
13	47	Mick Schumacher	HAAS FERRARI	72	+32.995s	0
14	5	Sebastian Vettel	ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES	72	+36.007s	0
15	20	Kevin Magnussen	HAAS FERRARI	72	+36.869s	0
16	24	Zhou Guanyu	ALFA ROMEO FERRARI	72	+37.320s	0
17	3	Daniel Ricciardo	MCLAREN MERCEDES	72	+37.764s	0
18	6	Nicholas Latifi	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	71	+1 lap	0
NC	77	Valtteri Bottas	ALFA ROMEO FERRARI	53	DNF	0
NC	22	Yuki Tsunoda	ALPHATAURI RBPT	43	DNF	0

* Provisional results. Note – Verstappen scored an additional point for setting the fastest lap of the race.

https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2022/races/1119/netherlands/race-result.html

 

Click here for the 2022 Formula 1 World Driver’s (Top 10) and Constructors Championship Standings.

 

Round 17 of the 2022 FIA Formula One World Championship heads straight to the historic and famous Autodromo Nazionale Monza in Monza, Italy next weekend for the Formula 1 Pirelli Gran Premio D’Italia 2022 from Friday September 9-Sunday September 11 to complete the triple-header and close out the European part of the season before the flyaway rounds.

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