Dutch Grand Prix talking points: Hadjar beaming, Leclerc seething and Piastri's star continues to rise

F1 returns after summer break with dramatic race at Zandvoort

McLaren driver Oscar Piastri on his way to victory at the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort. EPA

After the summer pause, Formula One returned with a Dutch Grand Prix that had everything: crashes, retirements, safety cars and a rookie stealing the headlines.

Zandvoort provided drama from the very start, its steep banking and unforgiving rhythm creating a spectacle that was as thrilling as it was unpredictable.

Ferrari’ endured a nightmare race, with both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc retiring early, while Lando Norris’ championship push suffered another blow, undone this time by an oil leak.

Through the chaos, 20-year-old Isack Hadjar kept his head, defended with maturity and seized a maiden podium that felt like the arrival of a new star.

It was messy and it was breathless: welcome back to Formula One action.

Here’s the highlights of the race:

Piastri claims victory in Zandvoort

Piastri’s star continues to rise. At Zandvoort he was untouchable, delivering his seventh win of the season in a drive that married control with composure. From the moment he launched cleanly off pole, the 24-year-old Australian looked in command. Three safety cars, brief rain and constant pressure from his teammate did not rattle the man who continues to demonstrate equanimity.

“I controlled the race when I needed to and obviously incredibly unfortunate for Lando at the end, but I felt like I was in control,” Piastri reflected afterwards. This was his seventh win in 14 races and with nine rounds to go, he now has a 34-point cushion at the top of the drivers' standings.

Is the gap to big to overcome? The Australian insists it’s too early to make such assumptions. There’s still a long way to go. “I need to keep pushing and trying to win races still. I wouldn’t say it’s a very comfortable margin. As we saw today, it can change with one DNF very, very quickly.”

Norris arrived at Zandvoort in strong form, hoping to carry the momentum before the break where the Englishman picked up three wins in four races to cut the gap to Piastri to just nine points. As the race commenced, he briefly lost second place to Max Verstappen off the line but swiftly reclaimed it, settling in behind his teammate for what looked a certain McLaren 1-2. It would have been their fifth in succession.

That all changed on Lap 64 when smoke began to pour from the back of his car. Within moments, Norris got out, the scale of the setback sinking in as he climbed clear of the cockpit. “It wasn’t my fault, so there’s nothing I can really do. It’s just not my weekend,” he conceded.

“Of course, it's frustrating. It hurts a bit for sure in a championship point of view. It's a lot of points to lose so quickly and so easily.” It was his second retirement of the year after Canada.

“We’ve identified an issue on the chassis side and will conduct a full review before Monza,” said McLaren team principal Andrea Stella. “This is the first technical problem for the team after a long run of faultless reliability.” McLaren will be eager for the drivers’ championship to be decided on track, by performance rather than by technical failures.

Hadjar's first podium

After watching Nico Hülkenberg finally step onto the podium at the British GP at the end of July, this time it was Isack Hadjar’s turn. The rookie, the very last driver confirmed for this season, repaid the faith shown in him by Racing Bulls with a third-place finish at Zandvoort. “Oh my god,” a thrilled Hadjar screamed over team radio. “What have we done? The pace was unreal. We’re on the podium, I can’t believe it!”

After finishing sixth in Monaco in May, the French-Algerian driver had slipped outside the points in the five races that followed. Arriving at Zandvoort with “a good feeling,” Hadjar delivered an outstanding lap to qualify fourth – his best qualifying result yet – giving him the confidence he needed for Sunday. Teammate Liam Lawson’s speed over long runs, coupled with the car’s rude health, only strengthened his belief in a strong race.

When the lights went out, Hadjar was immediately put to the test. Charles Leclerc nibbled at him on Lap 2, probing for an opening, but he defended with composure and precision. In the cool-down room afterwards, he explained how late braking and hanging on the outside allowed him to resist wave after wave of pressure, first from Leclerc and then from George Russell.

The car’s pace gave Hadjar the belief he could hold on to fourth place, but when Norris retired, the rookie was elevated onto the podium.

At age 20, Hadjar became the fifth-youngest driver in F1 history to finish on the podium and the youngest Frenchman to do so. He revealed he had already received a message from the nation’s greatest. “It feels good,” he smiled. “Alain Prost just texted me, it feels amazing to beat those kinds of records.”

A popular character in the paddock and admired by teammates and rivals alike, Hadjar’s breakthrough was widely celebrated. His team, in particular, were overjoyed. Performances of this calibre explain why many believe he will soon be promoted to partner Max Verstappen at Red Bull.

A nightmare day for Ferrari

Lewis Hamilton’s season at Ferrari lurched from frustration to despair at Zandvoort, where the seven-time world champion crashed out of the Dutch Grand Prix on Lap 23. Running in seventh, he lost control through the banked Turn 3 as light rain began to fall, a wheel slipping onto the painted line and sending the Ferrari hard into the barriers. The front end was destroyed and Hamilton’s race ended on the spot.

“I generally felt like it was going OK … I got to Turn 3 and had a snap and I couldn’t recover it,” he admitted afterwards, conceding his own error.

It was the latest blow in a campaign where a podium has remained out of reach. Hamilton himself has called recent displays “useless” and even questioned whether Ferrari should persist with him. It all got infinitely worse for the team when Leclerc was also eliminated; the Monegasque was taken out after rookie Kimi Antonelli collided with him at the same corner.

Leclerc was already having an eventful afternoon. On Lap 32, he produced one of the day’s most daring moves, braking late to sweep around the outside of Russell at Turn 10 and wrestle the inside line at Turn 11. The Ferrari edged ahead, though all four wheels appeared to have strayed beyond the white line and contact left both cars with damage. The stewards investigated but deemed the evidence “inconclusive”.

With both cars retired, the Scuderia left with nothing to show from this round and allowed Mercedes to close to within 12 points in the constructors’ standings. Adding to Ferrari’s woes, Hamilton was handed a five-place grid penalty for Monza next week, Ferrari’s home race, after stewards ruled he had not slowed sufficiently under double yellow flags before the start.

Mercedes confirm Russell for 2026, a day to forget for Antonelli

Mercedes confirmed at Zandvoort that Russell will continue with the team into 2026, though the final details of his contract are still to be agreed. Yet the spotlight fell on 19-year-old Kimi Antonelli, his Dutch Grand Prix a vivid portrait of a rookie season swinging between flashes of brilliance and painful mistakes.

Friday opened with a setback, Antonelli burying his car in the gravel before the session had barely begun. He regrouped, though, and qualified 11th, narrowly missing out on Q3. By Sunday, he had carved his way forward, pulling off a confident move on Alex Albon and later being allowed past Russell, whose car was damaged, to run sixth. For a moment, it looked like his weekend would yield something tangible. Then came Lap 53.

Sent out to undercut Leclerc, Antonelli rejoined behind the Ferrari and lunged low into the Turn 3 banking. His car oversteered, clipped into Leclerc and pitched the Ferrari into the wall. The stewards judged him “wholly and predominantly” at fault, handing down a 10-second penalty and two penalty points on his licence. That, combined with a five-second penalty for pit-lane speeding, dropped him from sixth on the road to 16th at the flag. He apologised to Leclerc afterwards.

It meant no points from another promising position and just a single point from his past five races. But Toto Wolff defended his young charge. “We knew there would be days we’d tear our hair out and others of brilliance. This weekend sums that up. We want him to go for the moves. My belief in him is 100 per cent,” he said.

Antonelli’s season has already included a podium in Canada, a sprint pole in Miami and even leading laps in Japan. Zandvoort was a hard lesson but consistency can never be expected from rookies.