Winners and losers from the 2024 Dutch Grand Prix qualifying

After a thrillingly competitive qualifying session at Zandvoort, here are our Winners and Losers from Saturday at the Dutch Grand Prix.

With Lando Norris crossing the line to claim an emphatic pole position at Zandvoort, his time broke the hearts of the throngs of fans who showed up to cheer on Max Verstappen.

Winners

Lando Norris

Unsurprisingly, our polesitter tops our list of winners as Norris produced exactly the type of performance he needs to if he is to turn the dream of a World Championship tilt into a realistic challenge.

A 78-point deficit is not insurmountable, although it is difficult, and utilising the pace of the McLaren to dominate the second half of the season is exactly what he needs to do – as Max Verstappen has proven he’s capable of.

After a tricky first half of the season in which he’s made quite a few errors to cost himself points, all he can do is approach the 10 remaining race weekends day by day, and kicking off the second half with such a statement time will be sure to give Verstappen some pause.

With Verstappen having crossed the line to beat his time and claim provisional pole as the chequered flag at Zandvoort, Norris dug deep to produce the kind of lap that the Dutch driver has been known to produce by placing pole position completely out of reach of anyone else as he ended up three-tenths of a second clear of his title rival.

Was the gap something he was surprised by?

“Maybe a little bit, but it all depends on wind and conditions,” he said afterward.

“You know, I feel like I did a very good lap, by far my best. But I think it’s a track where when you just hook everything up and it just flows a little bit better.

“You catch a little bit of a headwind or a little bit less tailwind in certain places, you can easily go one, two-tenths quicker. But I don’t know if that’s why or not.

“But the car was good and I felt good too. I mean, whenever you’re going to bring upgrades to a car, and I think especially for us, we’ve been quite patient. We’ve not really brought many upgrades, or we haven’t brought any real performance-enhancing upgrades since Miami.

We brought always little bits, and there are always little things that we’ve added, but this is our first, let’s say, upgrade. We took our time because we wanted to make sure it worked well and worked as soon as we put it on the car and it does what it wants. And so far it’s looked exactly that way. So credit to the team for playing a big part in this too.”

Max Verstappen

While the Dutch driver was beaten to pole position at a track where he has been unstoppable since its return to the calendar three years ago, Verstappen gave it his utmost and, once again, delivered under pressure in the final runs.

A small error on his first run meant he knew there was time on the table and, having gone fastest through sector two on his final run, gathered back that time despite a small slide through Turn 12.

The gap to Norris isn’t a small one, but the impression is that this is purely down to the car under him at this point as the Red Bull has been toppled from the top of the tree.

“Well, I don’t know,” when asked if this is the new reality for him entering the second half of the championship.

“I mean, it’s three-tenths here or whatever it was. I don’t know what, of course, the upcoming races will be.

“But I think, yeah, if you look at the last, what, seven races, it’s just been a bit more difficult for us. And we are trying to understand or try to just improve the situation. But it’s not a magic button or switch, you know, that you turn. So, yeah, we keep trying.”

But, while Red Bull may no longer be the fastest, Verstappen is still right up at the sharp end and can’t be discounted as a serious threat in the Grand Prix – even if the balance continues to elude him.

“W hen you see the gap, it’s going to be very tricky,” he said.

“Also, it just seems like Lando’s a bit happier in general with just the driving and how he feels. I’m a bit more all over the place with the balance, so I don’t know, maybe it stabilises a bit tomorrow, but I guess we’ll find out.”

George Russell

The British driver is in a rich vein of form at the moment, and came out on top of the intra-Mercedes battle once again.

Setting a time almost half a second quicker than Lewis Hamilton in Q2, despite having been unhappy with the balance of his car during Q1, Russell made it through into Q3 and outqualified Sergio Perez and Charles Leclerc and almost was able to join in the fight for the top three.

Producing the drive of a lifetime at Spa-Francorchamps last time out, Russell’s momentum is putting him in the shop window to stamp his authority on Mercedes when Hamilton departs at the end of this season.

Sergio Perez

Granted, Perez’s qualifying performance in Zandvoort, if he was any other driver, wouldn’t be earning him much by way of merit given he was over four-tenths of a second down on Max Verstappen at the chequered flag.

There’s also the caveat that, had he not needed to use an extra set of tyres in Q1 without the Hamilton incident which resulted in him backing off on his flying lap, he would have been able to get in a second run on fresh tyres.

“There’s always a bit in just getting the track evolution on two sets of tyres,” he said.

“There are probably a few tenths in it. Hard to know, obviously, but yeah, I believe that there was.

“Obviously, just having one run, you don’t want to mess it up and the lap wasn’t that clean. Whereas, if you have two sets, you just basically can attack a lot more on the first one.”

But fifth place for Perez is a reasonably solid performance and, given that Zandvoort isn’t expected to be one of his stronger races, the Mexican might be able to springboard this performance into rebuilding some of the confidence he badly needs at this point.

Points, and plenty of them, are all he needs to produce right now to stave off some of the pressure and scrutiny surrounding him, and a fifth-place grid slot at a track where overtaking is reasonably difficult sets him up well to achieve this.

Alex Albon

On a day when his teammate was destroying his car and writing off a load of new upgraded parts, Alex Albon produced the kind of day that justifies Williams’ enthusiasm for keeping him onboard for the future.

Jumping up into the top 10 in Q2 with a stellar lap resulted in Albon pulling off a big surprise as he outqualified quicker cars like Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, and Albon was thrilled with his eventual eighth place grid slot.

“I’m really happy with P8 and that our upgrades have helped us secure this position,” he said.

“It’s been very windy and gusty out there and it seems like if you were 10 seconds behind another car, they could have a completely different wind to you and it was halves of seconds that were in the wind, so it felt a little like the lottery.

“We’ve made a big step with the weight as well as the aero upgrade and it’s not the complete package either with more to come soon, so it’s all looking positive. The car felt strong and got better on each lap, so it’s great to get this result in these conditions today and to see the upgrades working well.

“We can all be happy, so a big thank you to the team for working hard to have the updates ready. We’ll be in the mix tomorrow, I’m feeling confident.”

More on the latest from the Dutch Grand Prix weekend

👉 F1 2024: Head-to-head qualifying record between team-mates

👉 F1 boss sets Dutch Grand Prix extension deadline with possible absence raised

Losers

Oscar Piastri

How can someone in third place be on the losers list, some of you may cry out.

But, as Piastri has pulled himself into the big boy leagues this season as he sheds his inexperienced rookie/sophomore year status, there’s no reason to not continue to hold him to loftier standards and, while the Australian has produced the goods on a regular basis this year, the pace was clearly in the McLaren to prevent Max Verstappen from claiming the front row and leaving Norris vulnerable on the first lap.

It’s on such things that this championship will be decided, and Piastri ending up half a second off the pace of Norris allowed Verstappen an extra position that he probably shouldn’t have had.

But, in fairness to the very level-headed and mature Piastri, he held his hands up to acknowledge he hadn’t done the job expected of him.

“I just didn’t do a good enough job, really. I think the first half lap was pretty solid and then the second half just wasn’t quite what I needed,” he said.

“So, yeah, clearly the car’s been very quick this weekend and, yeah, a little bit disappointing to not be a bit higher up, but we’ve still got a good race car underneath us and we can get some really good points and hopefully some trophies tomorrow. So, yeah, we’ll give it a try.”

Did the deficit come down to a change in the feeling of the car due to upgrades? Piastri doesn’t believe so.

“No, I mean, to be honest, the car feels very, very similar,” he said.

“I think, you know, we’ve improved the car like a second and a half since last year or something crazy, and it doesn’t feel that different. So I don’t think it’s anything to do with that. I think simply Lando did a good job in the last run of Q3, and I didn’t do as good a job as I should have. So, yeah, I think it’s just simply down to that.”

Carlos Sainz

The Spaniard was facing an uphill challenge to make it into Q3, given the lack of running he had on the soft tyre – a gearbox issue in Q2 cost him qualifying simulations, while the weather and lengthy red flag in Q3 still kept him from having a proper crack at things.

But, given he benefitted with an extra set of new soft tyres and had no issues getting through Q1, making it through to Q3 with a Ferrari should still have been achievable – particularly on a day when a Williams and an Alpine achieved it.

“I was still keeping my hopes up, given that I normally get up to speed very quickly, that I could make it through to Q3 today,” Sainz said afterward.

“However, given the fact that I’ve been three weeks without touching the car with no dry running yesterday at a truck like Zandvoort, wWe haven’t touched the soft tyre, tricky balance, tricky wind, not our fastest track for us, for sure, all these things added up – plus a bit of traffic in sector two – cost me probably Q3 but maybe I was being optimistic by believing we could make it.

“In Q2, I just lacked the experience of yesterday, knowing what to do with the front wing, with the toys, to set up the car for a new soft in Q2.

“I paid the price. It’s not easy after the break, as I said, not to do any laps in practice and go straight into quali with the soft tyre. In the end, it just didn’t click.”

Lewis Hamilton

The British driver never looked hooked up in qualifying, and held his hands up for not doing a good enough job in Q2.

“Today was frustrating,” he said afterward, having been knocked out in Q2 while George Russell went through to qualifying in fourth overall.

“We had been looking good throughout the weekend and in Q1, I was pleased with the balance of the car. Unfortunately, we struggled more in Q2, and it slipped through our fingers.

“I couldn’t go any faster than I did on my final lap and that wasn’t enough to get us through. These things happen but ultimately, I didn’t do a good enough job. I will push to get as many points as we can tomorrow and enjoy myself out there.”

Hamilton’s day may yet get worse, as he was also summoned before the stewards for an alleged block on Sergio Perez, despite his best attempts to get out of the way of the Red Bull driver.

Daniel Ricciardo

The Australian’s deficit to Yuki Tsunoda perhaps is a prime example of why Red Bull lacked the confidence to take the chance of slotting him into Sergio Perez’s seat for the second half of the championship.

Ricciardo finished almost a half a second off on Tsunoda’s time in Q1 and explained afterward that he had struggled to pull a lap together in the tricky conditions – pushing hard resulted in some slides and snaps, while an attempt to drive more smoothly and within the limits of the car just proved insufficiently quick.

Knowing he hadn’t managed to pull out the goods in the same way Tsunoda had in the sister car, Ricciardo denied that he’d been in any way distracted by the recent Red Bull speculation but admitted he knew he had to do better.

“No, it’s not a distraction. Honestly, I know what is on the line,” he said.

“I know what I need to do. Yeah, it’s frustrating when you feel you know you want to drive quali, in anger but I felt that, at times, I was just having to be a little bit too nice.

“Then, when you’re slow as well, when you’re nice and slow, then it’s frustrating. So it just wasn’t a nice session, let’s say that. But every quali is going to be important. Every race is going to be important. So, whether it’s me, whether it’s the car – whatever it is – the bottom line is Q1 is not good enough. So I have to accept that and do better.”

Logan Sargeant

Given that Sargeant’s future is near-certain to involve him leaving the F1 grid, his hopes of impressing another team faded massively on Saturday at Zandvoort.

While it’s not the intention to kick a man when he’s down, Sargeant’s error in third practice was the type of minor and silly mistake that can be career-defining given the massive consequences of just leaving a wheel wide into the wet grass.

The huge damage to the car thankfully didn’t result in any chassis issues, but did write off a sizeable portion of a newly-produced upgrade package.

It’s another weekend where Williams has, effectively, been reduced to one car as Sargeant’s side of the garage has had to focus merely on participation rather than competitiveness with a driver now lagging seriously behind on mileage this weekend.

As the American driver said, all he and his mechanics can do is regroup and go again, but will the Grove-based squad be tempted into taking a risk on Kimi Antonelli to give him some mileage on behalf of Mercedes before season end? With mistakes like this one from Sargeant, he’s giving them reason to think they have little to lose.

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