The main talking points ahead of F1 Dutch GP

Does Verstappen need (a lot of) rain for another Zandvoort win? - Ronald Vording

Max Verstappen has won the Dutch Grand Prix three times, but last year Helmut Marko called Red Bull’s performance in the dunes “alarming”. Lando Norris won with a 23-second lead, and over the past 12 months McLaren has only become stronger, while Red Bull’s decline has continued.

As the second half of the season begins, Verstappen and Red Bull already know that they will not win a world title this year. Third place in the drivers’ standings is the highest achievable, and Verstappen has to hope for single-day success. But even on that front, the Dutchman isn’t particularly hopeful. He made it clear in Hungary that under normal circumstances it will be extremely difficult to win another race this season.

Verstappen is strong at Zandvoort and can pull a magical qualifying lap out of the bag at times, but in dry conditions even more is needed to compete for victory. However, Verstappen did say “under normal circumstances” for a reason – so what if the weather plays a role this weekend? The Red Bull driver has explained that mixed conditions play even more into McLaren’s hands: on intermediates, their tyre advantage is even greater, meaning Verstappen would need a classic wet-weather race to win – ideally one with chaos. But even then, as we have seen in Belgium, the first question is whether there will be any racing at all…

It makes a fourth triumph for Verstappen in front of his home crowd an improbable scenario, although the orange army will still cling to a little bit of hope – no matter how unlikely that may be this year.

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Will McLaren's intra-team title battle ignite around the Dutch dunes? - Filip Cleeren

Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren

If at one point it looked like Oscar Piastri's impressive consistency would knock the winds out of the 2025 drivers' title fight, especially after Lando Norris' no-score in Canada, then three wins in four for the latter means the fight really is back on.

Zandvoort marks the start of the real 10-round title run-in, and you will find few people to argue against a McLaren-dominated weekend around the twists and turns of the high-downforce circuit. The Dutch dunes have been a happy hunting ground for Norris in the past, with the 25-year-old dominating the race from pole last year – the first driver to deny home hero Max Verstappen since the Zandvoort returned to the F1 schedule.

But Piastri is a different beast compared to 12 months ago, and as has been the case almost every race weekend this season, the pair is so closely match that execution in the final stages of qualifying will likely be the difference between victory and defeat.

Norris' Montreal blunder aside, where he crashed into Piastri and McLaren was fortunate the Australian was able to continue, the pair's title fights has been intriguingly harmonious and exceedingly fair. Will that continue when the races start counting down and all the chips are on the table?

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Opportunity knocks for the drivers needing a reset - Stuart Codling

Franco Colapinto, Alpine

A 24-race season demands a particular kind of stamina. Drivers are busier than ever during grand prix weekends and, even when there’s the luxury of two or even three weeks between rounds, much of that is taken up by travel and the essential process of reviewing what went right or wrong the previous weekend… as well as preparing for the next one.

So for those drivers who have been struggling for form or have had issues adapting to particular car characteristics, the summer break represented an opportunity to take a beat. For these individuals the season had become a procession of seemingly insurmountable frustrations.

So whether Carlos Sainz, Yuki Tsunoda, Kimi Antonelli and Franco Colapinto have spent the summer break on the beach or not, it will be intriguing to see how they approach this weekend. Sainz is perhaps the most curious case since his problem has been one of assembling all the constituent parts of a grand prix into a successful whole; he has been quick at times, only to suffer some calamity during qualifying – not all of his own making.

Tsunoda has toiled with a car spec some way behind his team-mate’s, and this has been confidence-sapping because so much of Red Bull’s development this season has been channelled into making the RB21 less peaky and unpredictable. At the same time, though, given parity he will no longer have that as an excuse.

Antonelli and Colapinto have looked less confident every time they get in their respective cars of late. Antonelli seems to have passed his nadir now Mercedes has reverted to its old rear-suspension spec; Colapinto’s problem has been that every time he tries to squeeze more pace out of the consistently inconsistent Alpine, it snaps at him. Of all the drivers struggling for form he has the biggest mountain to climb.

Franco Colapinto crashes Alpine F1 car in Pirelli test

Summer's gone, silly season and contract sagas are back - Jake Boxall-Legge

One by one, the 2026 pieces are starting to fall into place. Ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix, Cadillac locked in its drivers for its inaugural season in Formula 1 – opting for the experience of Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez.

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Now that that's sorted, there will surely be guaranteed questions – interspersed between those about holidays and golf – towards the rest of the teams on the identity of their drivers.

We know that Mercedes will stick with George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli, and it was trailed before the four-week break that no contractual discussions would take place over the summer. That's not going to stop people from asking about it; it'll be framed as "Can you start to have those discussions now?", or someone who didn't get the memo will ask why it wasn't done over the holidays.

With neither Bottas nor Perez in the Alpine frame, one of Steve Nielsen's first tasks when he joins in September will be to work on finding a partner for Pierre Gasly. Can Franco Colapinto impress enough in Zandvoort to keep the seat? Will Yuki Tsunoda start matching Max Verstappen more regularly, if to ensure more regular sips at the poisoned number-two chalice? The Dutch Grand Prix weekend will start to answer some of these questions...

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