ZANDVOORT, Netherlands – Max Verstappen made the home fans happy with a comfortable victory in the return of the Dutch Grand Prix Sunday at Circuit Zandvoort.
Verstappen eased to a comfortable victory Sunday, outpacing his Formula 1 championship rival Lewis Hamilton all day on his way to the victory in front of his home crowd. Verstappen started from the pole and led from start to finish despite making two pit stops for tires.
Hamilton was never close enough to challenge Verstappen. He gave up the chase with two laps to go in order to pit for soft tires to try and set the fastest lap of the race, which he succeeded in doing on the final lap. Despite that effort, Verstappen is now back on top of the driver standings by three points ahead of Hamilton.
“It’s incredible to win here today on another home track and it feels great to take the lead in the driver’s championship again,” said Verstappen. “Of course the expectations were very high coming into the weekend and it’s never easy to fulfil that but the whole crowd has been incredible and I am so happy to win here. It was quite a tough race, Lewis was really putting the pressure on and both Mercedes’ had really good pace but we managed to have that three second buffer when we needed it and I think that was very important. We can be really pleased with the whole team performance; we made the right calls and we managed the race really well. Seventy-two laps around this track is cool, especially in front of all these fans, they were incredible throughout the whole race, I’ve never experienced anything like this before in my life. I will of course celebrate at home this evening, but Monza is just around the corner and the championship fight is tight, so I want to make sure we perform at our best.”
Valtteri Bottas completed the podium and third and was the last driver to complete all 72 laps as Verstappen lapped the rest of the field. Pierre Gasly started and finished fourth for the AlphaTauri team. He bested the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc, who came home in fifth.
Alpine’s Fernando Alonso was sixth, followed by Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jr., Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, Alpine’s Esteban Ocon and McLaren’s Lando Norris.