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When the rain strikes as quickly as it did in both the opening and closing stages of the Dutch Grand Prix, it leaves Formula One drivers very little margin for error.
They’re the kind of conditions that can see drivers make up for the lack of pace from their cars, or go from hero to zero in a matter of seconds through no fault of their own.
Without the rain shower that hit with 12 laps remaining and had the race stayed green, these rankings might have looked slightly different. But the final red flag and six-lap sprint to the finish offered some late twists and a surprise name on the podium — even if the man on the top step was the same as at the previous eight races.
Here’s our rundown of the top 10 performers at the Dutch Grand Prix. Remember that our rankings consider the full weekend, including qualifying, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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1. Max Verstappen (Red Bull)
Starting position: P1
Finishing position: P1
Zandvoort offered another reminder that Max Verstappen is in the form of his life. If there was any race he was going to lose between now and the end of the season, it would surely be one with two sudden, hard rain showers, a red flag and plenty of confusion in the pits.
Yet Verstappen did not miss a beat. He kept his head despite the unavoidable pressure of racing on home soil — the vast majority of the 105,000 fans on race day were there to support him — and did not make a single mistake. He was in another league when he made the switch to intermediates, carving seconds per lap out of Sergio Pérez’s lead before carefully managing his soft tires through the dry phase of the race.
Even in the highest-pressure moment, on the restart when he had six laps to hold on and was the first to hit all the braking points in the damp, Verstappen kept his cool. Unstoppable and untouchable, no matter what’s thrown at him this year, he brushes it off and just keeps winning.
2. Alex Albon (Williams)
Starting position: P4
Finishing position: P8
Hats off to Williams’ tire whisperer.
On a weekend when Williams wasn’t expected to shine, the change in wind direction went in favor of the FW45 in key corners. It became evident early on in the race weekend that the car may be competitive, even on a track that didn’t play to its straight-line prowess. “The car felt good the first lap we drove in FP1, and normally when that happens, the others start to really chip away at it, get their car in their window,” Albon said Saturday. “I just felt like, ‘Oh maybe we’ve hit our sweet spot early.’ We didn’t really play too much with the car since FP1, and it made me feel confident.
“Then when you add confidence with a track like this, which is so narrow, so uncompromising, and at the same time, mixed conditions, wet, dry, that kind of thing, you really just need to feel at one with the car, and I have done this weekend.”
Albon qualified fourth, equaling his highest qualifying position in his F1 career. But he had a massive challenge come Sunday with Fernando Alonso, Carlos Sainz and Sergio Pérez right behind him, and Charles Leclerc not too far off. Rain came early on during the race, but while many drivers swapped for intermediate tires, Albon stayed out on his set of softs, not pitting until lap 44. Zandvoort’s two banked corners that are steeper than those at Indianapolis puts more stress on the tires, which makes this run on a set of tires that normally wear out the fastest all that more impressive.
He looked like he would bring home a P6 finish but ended up in eighth after losing to George Russell and Lando Norris on the undercut.
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3. Pierre Gasly (Alpine)
Starting position: P12
Finishing position: P3
Pierre Gasly looked like he belonged on the podium, not making a single mistake on race day aside from going a teensy bit too fast in pit lane (0.1 km/h over the limit, resulting in a five-second time penalty). However, it didn’t matter given the pace Alpine had.
The Frenchman started P12 but pitted on the first lap and subsequently rocketed towards the front. From there, he didn’t miss a step and benefited from Sergio Pérez’s time penalty (also for speeding in pit lane). Sunday’s finish marked his first grand prix podium with Alpine and ended his two-year drought.
4. Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin)
Starting position: P5
Finishing position: P2
After slipping back in the fight to be best of the rest against Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren through the July races, Aston Martin and Fernando Alonso returned to form at Zandvoort. From fifth on the grid, Alonso’s canny, cunning nature shone through off the start as he took the low line at Turn 3 to grab two positions before following Verstappen into the pits at the end of the second lap.
Alonso has always excelled in these kind of mixed conditions, owing to his supreme confidence behind the wheel. As the track dried out, he made an early switch to slicks that briefly put him in the fight against Pérez for P2, only to lack the outright pace to stick with him.
The mistake from Pérez (the off at Turn 1) when the second shower hit moved Alonso up to second, which he clung to through the final six-lap sprint to the line after the red flag. He admitted after the race that he was “thinking about trying” a move on Verstappen at the restart, only to not get close enough to give it a go.
5. Carlos Sainz (Ferrari)
Carlos Sainz extracted as much performance as possible from his SF-23 on a tricky weekend for the team as a whole.
He missed first practice with Robert Shwartzman hopping into the driver’s seat (teams are required to run rookie drivers in two FP1 sessions during the season). Sainz went on to qualify sixth, going on near-perfect runs despite the wet track during Q1 and Q2, but the car still proved tricky to handle. He said Saturday, “We just simply know that our high-downforce rear wings are not performing as they should, and when we come to these tracks we don’t put as much downforce in the car as the others, and we’re sliding a lot more. So, the car is trickier, it’s windy, long corners also, which is not ideal for our car.”
Sainz didn’t have the pace to contend for a podium, but he managed to maintain his position, even with a surging Lewis Hamilton later in the race. The only blip on the radar for the Spaniard this weekend was the reprimand and team fine for the “potentially dangerous” maneuver on Oscar Piastri during qualifying. The stewards found that Ferrari didn’t give Sainz a heads up about Piastri until they were alongside one another, and though Sainz couldn’t see the McLaren, his rapid push to get to the dry line created a possibly dangerous situation.
In the end, Sainz did all he could during the challenging Dutch Grand Prix as he stayed ahead of the Mercedes and McLarens despite the Ferrari not having great pace.
6. Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)
Starting position: P13
Finishing position: P6
Lewis Hamilton said his run to sixth at Zandvoort felt like “redemption” through a difficult weekend. He’d qualified 13th after Yuki Tsunoda impeded him at the end of Q2, although Hamilton was doubtful immediately after the session that it made any difference to his result. As he put it, “we were just slow out there.”
Things continued to go against Hamilton early in the race. Mercedes did not anticipate the rain shower would be so heavy nor last so long, meaning he did not pit until Lap 3 for intermediates, dropping him to last.
The recovery from there was impressive as Hamilton found his groove with the car, allowing him to battle up the order with some great overtakes — especially the lunge on Charles Leclerc into Turn 1 — that put him back in the frame for points. Although he hassled Sainz for fifth to the line, there was ultimately no way past.
Yes, it could have been much more than sixth had things gone Hamilton’s way in qualifying and early in the race. But it was still a solid recovery and a tidy haul of points given where he was on Saturday evening.
7. Lando Norris (McLaren)
Starting position: P2
Finishing position: P7
Lando Norris looked poised to secure another podium finish this weekend after qualifying second. But the first pit stop of the day left the McLaren driver searching for ways to climb back up the grid.
When the early rain hit Zandvoort, Norris was left out until Lap 3, which caused him to drop back in the field and out of points contention. “It’s clear we made the wrong decision, we made a bad decision, it’s something we’ll talk about and review,” he said after the race “We’ve made a couple this season, we’ve lost too many positions and too many points with a couple of these things.” However, the second part of the race went more smoothly as his pit stops were timed better and Norris snagged positions back en route to a P7 finish.
8. Liam Lawson (AlphaTauri)
Starting position: P19
Finishing position: P13
What a debut for Liam Lawson.
He hopped into the AlphaTauri for an injured Daniel Ricciardo and only had one practice to learn as much as he could about a car he’s never competed in. Lawson may have been the slowest in qualifying (he got bumped up to a P19 start with Kevin Magnussen beginning the grand prix from pit lane), but Sunday proved to be a new day. The 21-year-old had a solid start and began battling his way up the grid, exchanging overtakes with Leclerc at one point.
“That was quite eventful,” Lawson said Sunday. “I think he was struggling a lot on the softs and every time I passed him he passed me back on the straight, so a little bit frustrating but obviously it’s good to get experience. I feel like I had experience of every situation in that race with multiple pit stops, wheel-to-wheel racing, dry, so it was a good learning experience.”
He ran just outside of points and finished 13th. The one mark on his race was the 10-second penalty for impeding in the pits, which was not his fault since AlphaTauri called the drivers in for a double stack.
9. Sergio Pérez (Red Bull)
Starting position: P7
Finishing position: P4
A weekend of swinging fortunes for Pérez, but one where he simply did not have the pace to put up any kind of challenge to Verstappen across the garage. The 1.3 second gap in qualifying was pretty startling, only for things to swing right back in Pérez’s favor early in the race when he called to pit for intermediates at the end of the first lap, catapulting him into the lead.
With a 13-second buffer to Verstappen, Pérez looked to have a real shot at a shock win from eighth on the grid. Yet in just a few laps, Verstappen carved into his advantage, showing once again just how big the gulf is between the two drivers. The pit strategy favored Verstappen in order to protect the 1-2, but even so, Pérez simply didn’t have the pace.
Two late mistakes cost Pérez a surefire second place: the off at Turn 1, which meant Alonso moved up to P2 ahead of the red flag restart; and the pit lane speeding that resulted in a five-second penalty, dropping Pérez to fourth in the final classification. A missed opportunity on a weekend where the gap to Verstappen was laid bare.
10. George Russell (Mercedes)
Starting position: P3
Finishing position: P17
Unlike Hamilton, George Russell did get the most out of the Mercedes by making it through to Q3 and qualifying an impressive third on the grid. But like Hamilton, his race quickly unraveled as Mercedes tried to see out the early rain by keeping him out on slicks.
Russell only made the change to intermediates at the end of Lap 4, causing him to fall to the rear of the field and vent on the radio about throwing away a potential podium. The attempt to get to the end of the race on what was effectively a one-stop strategy once the rain stopped, taking hards under the safety car, allowed him to rise up the order.
Russell wasn’t able to keep Albon back and he was a team player to allow the faster Hamilton past on fresher tires, and was set for points prior to the late rain and red flag. His battle with Norris over seventh ended in light contact and a tire puncture that dropped Russell to the rear of the field.
(Lead photo of Max Verstappen and Pierre Gasly: John Thys/AFP via Getty Images)
