A tense qualifying session at Zandvoort ended with mild rain complicating matters for the drivers, but World Champion Lando Norris kept his head cool and took pole in his orange McLaren. Sprint race winner George Russel was second fastest while Kimi Antonelli will start from third on the grid.
Bingo.
Leclerc had a single overtake due to Norris having a deployment mistake. I don't remember seeing any other overtake the entire race.
It would still have been boring for 22 or 23 laps.
Yeah but, IIRC, it was by like 0.1s, right? From what I remember watching, almost all team mates were within 0.1s from each other, or thereabouts. But the key thing here is that even Tsunoda and Lawson were 0.1s slower, ie, they stepped into a car they never drove before with only 1 Practice and very limited sets of tyres and are immediately on pace
What does that tell us about F1 now ?The issue of Max's team mates failing at Red Bull was entirely for the fact that the previous cars were exclusively built for his driving style. The new gen cars are in some way, moved away from those specific elements that gave Max the strength. Hence, his team mates are now closer, including Hadjar. It wasn't that they were bad drivers. The current gen cars are obviously not what instinctive drivers want, but there is still racing element in them. Blaming the new regs for reduced gap between Max and his team mates now, is too simplistic.Artur Craft wrote: ↑22 Aug 2026, 18:06Yeah but, IIRC, it was by like 0.1s, right? From what I remember watching, almost all team mates were within 0.1s from each other, or thereabouts. But the key thing here is that even Tsunoda and Lawson were 0.1s slower, ie, they stepped into a car they never drove before with only 1 Practice and very limited sets of tyres and are immediately on pace
Last year, Lawson was like 1s slower than VER despite doing pre season testing and etc. Now he´s keeping up just like Hadjar has been. The driving challenge aspect of F1 is almost dead now
