How Verstappen defied home pressure and two downpours to win F1's Dutch GP

Ever-looming rain clouds were the biggest indicator that summer was truly over. A distinct back-to-school vibe permeated the Dutch Grand Prix weekend, as hints of lethargy around the Formula 1 paddock were invariably shaken off once it came down to business.

On Max Verstappen’s home turf, the story of the weekend was about one driver. The two-time champion has been credited with the surge of interest that led to the Dutch GP’s reinstatement to the F1 calendar after a 35-year hiatus, the 17,000-strong population of Zandvoort bolstered by hundreds of thousands for one weekend a year. Those expecting a sun-drenched beach trip to extend their summer holidays, however, would receive precipitation upon their parade.

This year’s edition of the race was a tale of two downpours: one at its opening, and one at the climax. The first took the strategies carefully curated by the teams and cast them into the aether, and plans had to be swiftly concocted on the fly.

Just as the race had settled into its rhythm and the last vestiges of turbulence ironed out, a bulging cloud emerged from the northwest over land and sea. Zandvoort, perched precariously on the Dutch coast, sat within its trajectory as the heavy rain washed over the beaches.

But nothing could unsettle Verstappen from his homecoming. He was seemingly unencumbered by the weight of expectation, nor distracted by the boisterous Dutch fans festooned in tangerine-tinted fare. The pressure was certainly there – Red Bull boss Christian Horner said, “You'd be a robot not to [feel it]”.

“You could see in his face, you've got 100,000 Dutch men and women singing the national anthem,” he added. “That's a big moment for him, for any national driver, and I think that he's got the royal family here, coming to see him just before he steps into the car. He's got so much expectation.”

On Verstappen’s side was the fact that the previous eight races had gone exactly to plan, and Verstappen had delivered results akin to a postman unsullied by sleet or hail. Despite the pressure, why should his home race be any different?

Verstappen easily covered off Norris at the race start, but delayed one lap too many before switching to inters which put Perez ahead

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

In qualifying, Verstappen had been largely uncontested in his path to pole, and only a slight challenge from Lando Norris offered any real jeopardy. Norris contended pre-race that the start would be the same, and imagined that even if he could pose any threat to the Red Bull parked ahead, his assault would be fleeting at best.

At worst, it would be non-existent, which came to pass as Verstappen made the perfect getaway to force Norris into folding behind into Turn 1. Instead, the biggest threat emerged from the skies above as rain had already started intensifying from the gentle pitter-patter that pockmarked the dry asphalt.

The deluge was strong enough to prompt a handful of drivers to pit in response at the end of the first lap, even if the indications were that it would clear up in short order. Verstappen stayed out for another tour, but Red Bull pulled Sergio Perez into the box for intermediate boots to cover off all eventualities. It was hardly a vintage service from Red Bull’s finest, but it got Perez ahead of the other early stoppers – most of whom had nothing to lose.

"Lining up and seeing the rain coming down, it was tough to make the right calls,” said Verstappen. “I thought together with the team, the rain is coming, but maybe not enough to switch to an inter and maybe survive for a few laps. So we decided together to stay out for one more lap. But that at the end of the day was the wrong call. But it made the race definitely more fun because I had to pass a few cars.

Perez’s extra lap before his eventual stop proved to be one too many on the intermediate tyre, and the Mexican emerged from the pits 2.5s adrift of Verstappen and growing as the tyre temperature differences began to surface

“Luckily, within a few laps, I closed down like 10 seconds of the gap. So that was very important for the rest of my race…”

During that second lap, the picture had changed significantly. Perez and the other intermediate runners were on the perfect tyre for the conditions and had more than halved the gap to the leaders despite the effect of the pitstop loss.

Verstappen called in, as did Fernando Alonso behind him; the Spaniard had moved up to third on the opening lap having made what he’d unabashedly termed as “the overtake of the month” to clear both George Russell and Alex Albon at the banked Turn 3 on the inside line, and passed Norris on the subsequent tour prior to stopping.

It was the second-best time for them to stop, but Perez had delivered a wonder strike in going early and had melted the gap to Norris and Russell out in front. Verstappen was forced to make some rarefied passes on the other early stoppers, clearing Zhou Guanyu and making a more robust challenge on Pierre Gasly at Turn 3.

In a reverse of the first round of stops, Perez waited one lap longer than Verstappen before switching back to slicks, costing him the lead

Photo by: Dom Romney / Motorsport Images

But the eventual play for the lead came amid the stops. The crossover period between wet and dry tyres was much more obvious than usual, given the bravery of a handful of drivers to persist with their starting slicks, and their sectors started to illuminate the timing board in shades of magenta. Verstappen ditched his inters on the 11th lap, collecting a new set of soft tyres with the hope of securing an undercut over his team-mate, while Perez hung on as Red Bull sensed a brief threat of more rain incoming.

Perez’s extra lap before his eventual stop proved to be one too many on the intermediate tyre, and the Mexican emerged from the pit garage 2.5s adrift of Verstappen and growing as the tyre temperature differences began to surface. The gap stabilised, but Verstappen had to build an advantage again when a safety car wiped out his 3s lead after Logan Sargeant threw his Williams along the wall on lap 16 of 72, on the exit of Turn 8. The clean-up operation required five laps to complete, but this was hardly Verstappen’s first rodeo in leading a restart.

Wisely leaving Perez in Alonso’s clutches as he gunned the throttle through the banked Arie Luyendyk corner, Verstappen kicked off the 22nd lap of the race in earnest and immediately escaped DRS range to begin his customary inexorable march towards victory. The gap to his team-mate grew to over two seconds within just four laps; the 40 laps after the restart effectively emerged into the usual cruise at the front.

The Verstappen-Red Bull combination seems to work harmoniously in standard conditions. The RB19’s predictability and balance just clicks perfectly with Verstappen’s controlled style of driving, much like Sebastian Vettel did with the team in his heyday. Perhaps where Verstappen has the edge over his predecessor’s period of dominance in the previous decade is that, in races where inclemency lurks, his feel for the car is transcendent.

Alonso perhaps summed it up best in his assessment of Verstappen’s rich vein of form, explaining that "you need to enter into a mood, in a state that you are connected with the car. I think Max is achieving that 100% more often than us at the moment, than any other drivers. So that's why he's dominated.”

That’s evident in Verstappen’s lap times after the safety car. From lap 24 to lap 49, when he pitted for another set of soft tyres, he did not once stray outside of the 1m15s boundary. That’s remarkable consistency and shows his skillset at his best; at Spa, he showed glimpses of bravado when he discussed his pace and the fastest lap with his team. This time, there was none of that.

Instead, he diligently stuck to a target that would ensure he extended his stint for as long as possible and kept up the same pace for 25 straight laps within a 0.712s window. When he made that next stop, he sat either side of the 1m14s mark for 10 straight laps and looked set to continue that pace. Then, the weather changed.

As the race approached its final quarter, weather radars started to show a deep pocket of rain heading towards the circuit from the North Sea. It looked to set things up for a dramatic conclusion, but nobody could react until the first patches of rainfall started to pelt the track. It was simply a case of having to wait.

Relentless consistency after the safety car peeled in helped Verstappen consolidate his winning advantage

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

The end of the 60th lap proved to be the clincher for most. Verstappen was, at this juncture, 10s up the road from Perez and thus it proved too early for him to call in, but that window was enough to convince Red Bull to pull in its second driver for intermediate tyres.

The majority of the field followed him in, while Verstappen was given the call early on the 61st lap to conduct his own switch to the wet tyre at the end of that tour. Initially, he thought, he ought to be able to squeeze one further lap out of the slicks, but engineer Gianpiero Lambiase made sure to put his foot down. Verstappen saw why a few moments later, as the rain once again began to bucket it down with greater intensity compared to that at the start of the race.

“That lap was definitely too dry in the back [of the circuit], but it started raining on the main straight, for example,” Verstappen recalled. “I went again and I came again through sector two. It was still dry, but I don't know of course what's going on at the main straight or Turn 1. And apparently, it was really coming down.

“So the team told me, ‘No, you have to come in this lap’. I think that it requires a bit of feeling from both sides. Sometimes it can be a little bit more up to you, sometimes a bit more up to the team. At the end of the day, you have to trust each other in making the right call. And yeah, I was very happy that they called me in the second time round!”

Perez’s hopes of a third win of 2023 were hanging by a thread, and then evaporated altogether when he slipped off the road at the first corner on the 63rd lap and ceded a position to Alonso

Relative to Verstappen, Perez lost a hatful of time in the pitlane as Red Bull had not been ready with his intermediate tyres, losing any of the advantage he might have gained from stopping earlier as Verstappen’s in-lap was conducted in semi-wet conditions. The Guadalajara-born driver’s hopes of a third win of 2023 were hanging by a thread and then evaporated altogether when he slipped off the road at the first corner on the 63rd lap and ceded a position to Alonso.

Conditions had worsened significantly over that lap, being upgraded from plain old rainy to torrential, and Red Bull played it safe with Verstappen by pulling him in once again for the full-wet compound. His gap over Alonso was large enough to make that happen with no real penalty, but the red flag was quickly flown on his return to the circuit when Zhou fired his Alfa Romeo into the wall at Turn 1.

Perez had just pulled in for wet tyres too and tapped the inside wall on the way in, and his agony was worsened when the pitlane closed in response to the red flag, which left him ignominiously sitting at the pit exit. Luckily, his blushes were spared when the order was counted back to the end of the previous lap – for the time being, at least.

Perez bashed the wall and sped in the pitlane during his switch to the full wet tyres, incurring a 5s penalty

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

A 43-minute hiatus ensued as the FIA’s stewards elected to wait out the rain. The sea breeze offered no more rain clouds on the conveyor belt towards Zandvoort, thankfully offering the poncho-enrobed fans in the grandstands some respite from the weather. Sun peeked through growing cracks in the sky, and the restart was on; two laps would be conducted under the safety car once those who had not reached lap 64 had completed the full circuit, to conclude with a six-lap shootout for glory.

Perez was, by dint of speeding in the pitlane during his stop for wets, out of the picture. Alonso was not only ahead, but Perez had copped a 5s penalty for that pitlane indiscretion. Verstappen, in the meantime, had someone who could theoretically threaten his home race hegemony behind him; after all, Alonso was hardly going to let a chance of a first victory since 2013 – no matter how slender – go begging…

As the two-lap parade behind the safety car came to an end, Alonso stuck close to Verstappen. The Red Bull looked to have built enough of a buffer emerging from Turn 14, but the Aston Martin behind him got a not-insignificant tow towards the first corner. While Alonso was repelled at the Tarzanbocht, he continued to try and prise open a gap.

"I was thinking about trying, so I was not conservative,” was Alonso’s account of the restart. “I thought about what to do a lot in the red flag period. I thought about what were the possibilities – obviously, the move in Turn 3 was something that was in my head, also into Turn 1. I discussed it with the team as well, that my feeling was that I wanted to try today, but obviously, I didn't want to compromise any big points for the team because second was very important as well.

“But they were happy with me to try. At the restart, I tried in Turn 14 launching the lap, trying to be flat in the banking with the cold tyres, which is a little bit risky, and trying to be side by side, at least into Turn 1. But I was not that close.

“I tried some different lines inside, outside, the opposite of Max for the first lap, in case one of the lines was grippier than his. It was close, but not enough.”

Once that first lap of the restart was over, Verstappen felt that he’d weathered the storm. That first lap would be marginally more difficult as the RB19 can sometimes take its time to inject much-needed heat into its tyres, but beyond that, the race was his.

“I knew that I had to survive that first lap,” the race winner mused. “Fernando was pushing very hard behind, I could see him closely in my mirrors. But once I had the temperature in my tyres, it was all balanced again.”

Alonso gave his best in pursuit of Verstappen, but never got close enough to attempt a move

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Perez hustled Alonso in those dying stages in his efforts to negate his penalty, particularly as Gasly was no more than a couple of seconds behind. The Frenchman’s strong showing had been made possible by his lap one stop for intermediates, but his own pitlane speeding penalty had been something of a setback when returning to the pits for softs earlier on. He served this during his next stop, also for soft tyres, which forced him to repass Carlos Sainz for fourth place moments before the rain struck.

Gasly gamely hung on to Perez, noting that “it's never easy to stay within five seconds of a Red Bull”, but he knew that a first podium in two years was on the line. The final deficit between them stood at just 1.990s, promoting the Norman to his fourth F1 podium.

“I saw the opportunity, I knew what was on the table and I just gave everything I had out there,” reckoned Gasly. “Actually, I expected to struggle a bit more with the warm-up initially. But the conditions were not too bad. It was pretty much a couple of qualifying laps at the end, which were really rewarding.

“I could feel what [Perez] was feeling, I went through it a couple of laps before with this five-second penalty. But I just tried to get everything.”

"Max is in a period of his career where he's just simply untouchable. And I don't think there's any driver on the grid that would be able to achieve what he's been doing in that car" Christian Horner

Beyond delivering on the expectations of the home fans, Verstappen had another reason to be cheerful; he’d matched the record that Red Bull had achieved a decade ago with Vettel in chalking up a ninth win on the bounce with the same driver. Horner admitted that this was “something I never thought we would end up repeating”, and naturally waxed lyrical about Verstappen’s continuing list of achievements amid his continuing dominance.

“I think Max is in a period of his career where he's just simply untouchable,” he reckoned. “And I don't think there's any driver on the grid that would be able to achieve what he's been doing in that car.”

On the balance of the season so far, it’s hard to disagree with that sentiment; even with a summer break for the other 19 drivers to refresh and reset, there doesn’t seem to be any clear challenger who could end the two-time champion’s current winning streak. Weather conditions have not been able to interfere either, as Verstappen seems to defy every barrier thrown his way.

Verstappen again gave his massed home fans the result they wanted

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images