Source :- PERTH NOW NEWS
World champ Lando Norris has handed McLaren a third successive Dutch Grand Prix victory at Zandvoort — but his Australian teammate Oscar Piastri again looked a mere also-ran in a race where he won last year.
There was plenty of drama in a contest that had to be re-started on a damp track on Sunday after home hero Max Verstappen crashed on the opening lap before world champion Norris then went on to make it back-to-back F1 victories to rejuvenate his title challenge.
But as Norris declared “the fight is still on”, there was to be no similar upturn in fortune for a deflated Piastri, who had to settle for sixth as he again couldn’t match his teammate’s pace.
It was after this race in 2025 — the last time Piastri tasted F1 victory — that the Melbourne driver looked on top of the world, 34 points clear of the chasing pack and seemingly unstoppable en route to what looked odds-on to be his first drivers’ title.
But his late-season slump has since been followed by a calamitous start to the 2026 campaign from which the Australian has never wholly recovered as Norris has proved a step ahead most weekends.
Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli finished second on Sunday (Monday AEST) to increase his championship lead over teammate George Russell, who obeyed orders to let the young Italian, on fresher tyres, through late in the race and then held off Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton for third.
Norris, who started on pole but had to fight back after losing the lead to Antonelli at the re-start, followed up his victory in Hungary last month to move to fourth in the championship on 159 points, still an aching 83 points behind Antonelli (242) but only 24 behind Hamilton and Russell (183).
But Piastri is out of the picture, in a distant seventh place on 104, behind fifth-placed Charles Leclerc (155) and sixth-placed Verstappen (112), who crashed out of his home Grand Prix at the end of the first lap after his Red Bull went into the concrete wall on the banked corner before skidding back across the track.
Though a wheel broke off and ran loose, scattering debris around, Verstappen was able to walk away unscathed, but it was a sad way for the Netherlands’ greatest driver to leave the Zandvoort circuit, which will drop off the F1 calendar next season, in front of his adoring fans.
But Norris was ebullient. “Let’s keep bringing upgrades. Let’s keep bringing performance. The fight is still on. Let’s keep going,” boomed the 2024 Zandvoort winner.
New Zealander Liam Lawson, a stand-in for injured Isack Hadjar, was seventh for Red Bull, Nico Hulkenberg eighth for Audi with Fernando Alonso putting Aston Martin, with a more powerful Honda engine, back in the points in ninth.
With agencies
