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Is Honda’s new engine enough to save Aston Martin’s F1 season? Dutch Grand Prix preview Formula 1 is back from its three-week break for what is Zandvoort’s last dance. Here’s what to watch out for at the 2026 Dutch Grand Prix There is a peculiar contradiction sitting at the heart of Zandvoort‘s farewell grand prix this weekend. Formula 1 has spent the best part of six years selling the Dutch Grand Prix as proof that a home hero can resurrect a dead race and turn it into one of the calendar’s hottest tickets. And yet, this is also the story of a race that had a four-time world champion, a sold-out grandstand every year, and an ocean of orange smoke rolling off the dunes – and still decided it couldn’t afford to carry on. Zandvoort‘s promoter confirmed back in December 2024 that 2026 would be the race’s last appearance on the calendar, agreeing only a one-year extension rather than the multi-year deal Formula 1 was hoping to strike. That timing matters because the call was made in the same week Max Verstappen wrapped up a fourth consecutive drivers’ title, at the peak of the most dominant stretch of his career. The Dutch GP wasn’t a race fading from relevance and quietly falling off the schedule. It decided to walk away from the sport at the exact moment it appeared to have the strongest possible hand to play. The explanation the promoter has given, repeatedly and consistently, is financial rather than sporting. Zandvoort operates without the government backing or sovereign wealth that underwrites many of Formula 1’s newer venues, and race director Robert van Overdijk has been blunt about what that means in practice. “We and the British Grand Prix at Silverstone are the only races that have to operate without any government support,” he said, adding that the event needed a full house on all three days simply to break even. “There were various options on the table to continue. We could have rotated with other circuits, there were opportunities to carry on every year as well. In the end it is our decision.” Circuit sporting director Jan Lammers put it more starkly still: staging the race meant doing so “completely at our own expense and risk.” That arithmetic only got harder as the event went on. Van Overdijk warned in 2024 that a government proposal to raise VAT on event tickets from 9% to 21% could put off fans and jeopardise the race’s future. In the end, Parliament rejected it after sustained lobbying from the sports and culture sectors, leaving the reduced rate in place. Zandvoort also faced a locally imposed “fun tax” that added a further few euros per ticket from 2024 onward, ostensibly to cover the municipal costs of policing and cleaning up after 100,000-plus fans a day. Meanwhile, Formula 1’s hosting fees, which venues pay for the right to be on the calendar, have continued to climb across the board as the sport has leaned into markets in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Las Vegas, where state money effectively removes the financial risk that Zandvoort was carrying alone. In 2019, when Zandvoort signed its contract to return to the calendar, Liberty Media earned an average of $31m per race in hosting fees. For last year’s 24 race season, the figure was 39% higher at $43m. Taking inflation into account, that’s a 12% real-term increase. There is also a more uncomfortable part to this story too. Dutch outlet RTL Z reported that the race’s shareholders paid themselves around €20 million out of the event’s financial reserves in 2024 — a significant chunk of its buffer — in the same period organisers were publicly stressing how precarious the business case had become. It doesn’t necessarily contradict the stated reasoning: a private company distributing profits while still judging the long-term outlook too risky to commit to isn’t inherently inconsistent. But it complicates the tidy version of the story where Zandvoort simply couldn’t make the sums work. Zandvoort’s exit also has to be read against a Formula 1 schedule that has grown to a record 24 rounds, with rotation deals in place to let established European venues share slots rather than lose them outright. Spa has taken that route, agreeing to host only four races in six years from 2026. Barcelona did something similar, ceding ground to Madrid’s new street race while keeping a share of future editions. Zandvoort was offered comparable options. Stefano Domenicali said: “All parties positively collaborated to find a solution to extend the race, with many options, including alternation or annual events on the table”. The circuit turned them down anyway. That is arguably the more revealing detail than the money itself. Given a path to stay on the calendar in some form, the promoter chose a clean ending instead. For a race built so explicitly around one driver, Verstappen has been strikingly calm about watching it disappear, although it helps that he has more ‘home’ races, like the Belgian GP. When the news broke in 2024, he described feeling “sad” but “very proud of what they have done.” Heading into what is now his final home race, with his own championship form dramatically reversed – he arrives at Zandvoort sixth in the standings, some 110 points off the lead, a far cry from the era that brought the race back in the first place – his tone has settled into something closer to acceptance than grief. “It’s important for those in charge to know when enough is enough,” he said, adding that Zandvoort’s operators had earned the right to end things on their own terms. It’s worth calling it what it is: not a failure of atmosphere, attendance, or lack of driving talent, but a failure of the economics underneath all of it. Zandvoort proved conclusively that a home hero can turn an almost circuit into a hugely popular venue that is successful in every aspect except its finances. Dutch Grand Prix preview Formula 1 is back from its three-week break for what is Zandvoort’s last dance. Here’s what to watch out for at the 2026 Dutch Grand Prix Zandvoort was, and is, an almost perfect example of what the ideal venue should look like for the modern F1: 98% of fans got there by train, bike or on foot, sustainability partners queued up to be associated with it, and every edition since 2021 has sold out. That travel record wasn’t just a nice statistic; it made Zandvoort the reference point for Formula 1’s own Net Zero Carbon by 2030 programme, earning the race Promoter of the Year and an ESG award at the 2023 F1 Promoter Awards, and prompting Domenicali to credit the Dutch organisers for having “pioneered sustainable solutions that have inspired our events around the world.” A circuit with no room for cars, encircling a town built for bicycles, ended up doing more for F1’s environmental case than venues many times its size and budget. What it couldn’t prove was that any of that popularity, or that sustainability leadership, could be converted into a business model resilient enough to survive without either a driver at the peak of his powers or a government prepared to underwrite the risk. Once Formula 1’s economics shifted decisively toward state-backed venues able to treat hosting fees as a rounding error, a privately run circuit in a country of 18 million people was always going to struggle to compete on the same terms as Qatar or Saudi Arabia, whatever the strength of its home support. In that sense, the Dutch Grand Prix is not really alone, and that is obvious in the way the calendar continues to be shaped. Zandvoort leaves the calendar after this weekend having done everything a promoter could reasonably ask of a race – full houses, a genuine star, and one of the best atmospheres in the sport. Somehow, that still wasn’t enough. That, more than any single balance sheet, is the real story of why the Dutch Grand Prix failed to survive.