The F1 lessons from Zandvoort
Hamilton on the attack, Verstappen celebrating
09/05/2022, 08:08 am
Max Verstappen wastes no time. After his Formula 1 home win in the Netherlands, the Red Bull driver is racing towards his second world championship. Mick Schumacher von Haas costs a possible points placement in the fight for a new contract.
Strong car, strong Verstappen
It was probably not that easy to concentrate on the essentials this weekend. The Dutch Grand Prix was a car race embedded in a three-day loud, beery open-air festival. 300,000 people came, almost all of them expecting, of course, a home win from Max Verstappen. The world champion was also honored by the royal family, and Verstappen is now an officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau. Rarely has there been such a drop for the Red Bull star this season, and the competition was much closer than last time. But Verstappen fought his way into the weekend after initial problems, took pole and also victory. Even in a strong car you have to do everything right first. That’s how you become world champion.
“Fucked”, “pissed off” and close
In this sense, Verstappen is currently strongly reminiscent of the Lewis Hamilton of recent years. The Lewis Hamilton of the present is currently having very different experiences. His team is only competitive at the best moments, and the ups and downs at Mercedes continue reliably. In Hungary there were legitimate hopes for the first win of the year, in Belgium a crash followed, in the Netherlands victory was once again so close and yet so far away. Only a late safety car took Hamilton’s theoretical chance, in the end he even slipped off the podium – what followed was an almost unprecedented tirade on the radio against his own team. He feels “fucked”, was “pissed off”. He later apologized credibly: “I was emotionally exhausted, I just forgot myself.” The longing for victory must be great for the long-term winners of yesteryear.
In search of the lost pace
Although Ferrari has already won this year, the Italians are endlessly chasing after the really big triumphs. And like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the old weakness can be admired again this year: The car is actually not bad at all, but too many things go wrong in the course of the season. A chaotic pit stop took Carlos Sainz out of the race on Sunday. “We keep losing points for ourselves,” said the Spaniard. However, team boss Mattia Binotto stated: “This incident worries me less than the speed of our car.” The circuit at Zandvoort should have suited the Reds particularly well, but at some point in the past few months Ferrari has lost its strengths from the start of the season.
Schumacher with delivery guarantee, Haas not
It was a fitting and almost expected punchline. For days and weeks, the team management at Haas focuses on Schumacher’s performance when it comes to a contract extension: If you want to drive with us, you have to prove yourself, something like that. Then comes one of the few races in which the car is competitive at all – and the team robs the driver of every chance with two very weak pit stops. What is clear after the race in Zandvoort: if anything was possible in the past few weeks, then Schumacher delivered. And again this weekend he was consistently faster than his teammate Kevin Magnussen. You actually have to look for a while for reasons that speak against a new contract.