news-engine

The ‘good answers’ that could break Piastri’s drought; axed Red Bull driver’s redemption shot: Talking Pts On Sunday night the blaring loudspeakers of Circuit Zandvoort will fall silent for the final time. Formula 1’s biggest weekend rave, the ludicrously loud and boisterous Dutch Grand Prix, will have been run for the final time. Organisers of the race, which returned the calendar only five years ago, opted against extending their contract beyond this season. The costs of hosting the race were too high for the boutique seaside circuit, which pitched its F1 comeback to capitalise on Max Verstappen mania. Fox Sports, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every practice, qualifying session and race in the 2026 FIA Formula One World Championship™ LIVE in 4K. New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1. Since 2021 Verstappen’s famous orange army of fans have piled between the dunes and danced to EDM for four days straight. Their Dutch hero won the first three races, prompting celebrations that would last deep into the night. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri won the next two events — suitably for the orange-clad team — and celebrations went deep into the night anyway. For whom will they be celebrating at their final party this weekend? DOES McLAREN HAVE THE MOMENTUM? Despite the team and both drivers being distant in both championship fights, McLaren arrives in Zandvoort in red-hot form, having dominated the Hungarian Grand Prix after a game-changing upgrade package. The team has more updates this weekend, and with Zandvoort being similar in layout to the Hungaroring, the expectations are that the team could have another strong weekend. It’s also the defending Dutch Grand Prix winner — and it’s Piastri who reigns. Piastri was unstoppable here last year, when he looked at the peak of his powers, and a retirement for the already beaten Norris earned Piastri his season-high 34-point lead. You would never have predicted then that it would have been Piastri’s last win to date. But the victory drought isn’t the full story. McLaren has won only three races since then — all with Norris; twice last year and in Hungary this season — and Piastri has had his chances. He came within a safety car of winning in Japan, and he led the first stint in Budapest before a strategy bungle and, then, unreliability took him out of the race. “It doesn’t really weigh on me much,” he said of his 12-month victory drought. “There’s been a couple of opportunities since then. “I think Hungary we felt close for the majority of that race. Obviously from a pace point of view it wasn’t the best of weekends, but Hungary is one of the tracks where you can get away with being a bit off the pace, and if you do other things right, then you can win the race, and that’s certainly where I feel like I was. “I feel like I’ve got some good answers on the things I wanted to improve from Hungary, and I’ll try and put that into action here. “It was a good weekend here last year. If we can replicate that, we’ll have a very good weekend. Let’s see what we’ve got this weekend.” McLaren says the upgrades this weekend “complete” the package it brought to Hungary, and Norris said it left him uncharacteristically with “quite a bit” of confidence about the team’s chances this weekend. “I’m never the guy who gets too far ahead of myself, so I’m not going to come in here thinking that we should just win the race again,” he said. “But our goals are set high, so we want to believe we can. “We just need to understand if it’s just brought performance everywhere, every track, every type of surface, all types of corners, whether it was more specific to there. “But it was clear we took a step forward, and that’s a good sign. We still want to believe we can be very competitive here.” CAN YUKI TSUNODA MAKE HIS CAMEO COUNT? Yuki Tsunoda was lying on a beach in Greece when his phone rang. Formula 1 was probably the furthest thing from his mind as he soaked in the Mediterranean sun — in fact speculation has recently linked him to a vacant seat in IndyCar for next season. But it was Formula 1 that was suddenly calling. Isack Hadjar had injured his wrist. Liam Lawson would be stepping up from Racing Bulls to Red Bull Racing to cover him. Tsunoda’s services were needed to fill Lawson’s absence. “When I heard, I was like half excited, half still doubtful because anything can happen, but I was super excited too,” he said. That was Tuesday. By Wednesday he was locked in. “I’m super excited, and physically I’m feeling ready,” he said. “I’ve done a couple of [private tests in old cars]. “It will be my first time in this car, but still, I’m very excited.” Despite interrupting his Greek training holiday, the timing couldn’t have been better for the 26-year-old. Axed after an underwhelming 22 races with Red Bull Racing last season, Tsunoda’s Formula 1 journey seemed at an end. Though he’s been connected to Esteban Ocon’s at-risk Haas drive, more recently he’s believed to have been shuffled down the shortlist by Ferrari junior driver Rafael Câmara. But no contracts have been signed yet, and now Tsunoda has a card his rival candidates can’t match: a live demonstration of his abilities. “It’s definitely a good opportunity,” he said. “There’s no better time than this. It’s always better to drive and show what I can do, rather than just talk. I know what I can do, but it’s always hard to show that or prove that without driving.” But the task is a difficult one. Tsunoda has no experience in a current Formula 1 car and only simulator experience of this year’s complex engines. This weekend is also a sprint round, meaning he’ll have only one practice session to acclimatise before being thrown into sprint qualifying. It’s not ideal, but it’s a hell of a lot more than he had to work with just last week — and after months on the sidelines, he’s champing at the bit just to get behind the wheel. “Since the season started I’ve been dying to be in the car and compete with the drivers,” he said. “I think this moment I will just enjoy, and obviously give my 100 per cent performance. Hopefully that will bring some good results.” LIAM LAWSON’S SHOT AT REDEMPTION Tsunoda isn’t the only driver in this line-up shuffle with a chance to prove something. Lawson’s unexpected promotion to Red Bull Racing for the weekend could be critical for the New Zealander’s career too. Lawson, and not Tsunoda, has been chosen for the task deliberately. He has more experience with these complex engines than Tsunoda as well as with the regulations. He’s also in good form, whereas Tsunoda hasn’t raced since his scoreless 14th-place finish in Abu Dhabi last season. The Kiwi gives the senior Red Bull team a better chance of scoring heavily than Tsunoda, at least on paper. But from his perspective, it’s a critical opportunity to right the wrong of last year’s axing after just two weekends. Lawson has spoken openly about feeling set up to fail last year. His preseason was interrupted, the car was in a poor place in the opening two rounds at circuits he’d never raced at, and he said the team had given him some wildly experimental set-ups that exacerbated his gap to Verstappen. Then he was mercilessly dumped after just two weekends — and Tsunoda’s limp performances in the seat proved there was a lot more to it than driver underperformance. Lawson has since struck impressive form at Racing Bulls, where he’s been the backbone of the team’s pursuit of a historic fifth place in the championship, but that two-race stint is still counting against his career. It’s true in the Red Bull program, which has never given a driver a second shot at RBR, but also in the broader F1 environment, where drivers only ever get one chance to shoot their shot at a top team, regardless of the circumstances. No-one is expecting Lawson to match Verstappen at Verstappen’s home track in his first outing with the team this season, but if he can perform respectably, it will go some way to repairing some of that reputational damage. “I’ve had a lot of races since then in Formula 1 as well, so I’ve learned a huge amount, and I’d like to try and take as much of that into this weekend as I can,” Lawson said, per Racer. “It’s for sure going to be interesting. “It’s in some ways exciting to be given an opportunity like this, but for me I feel like I’ve done a good job this year. Over the season it’s been strong — we’re in a good position in the championship. “I’d love to try and maximise that weekend and keep that consistency running, even if it’s in a different car.” As steep as the challenge is — don’t underestimate the difficulty of switching cars, never mind on a sprint weekend — Lawson has form here. Three years ago he was called up to Racing Bulls, at the time called AlphaTauri, on Saturday morning to cover Daniel Riccairdo, who had broken his hand in a practice crash. In treacherous and mixed conditions, he finished a commendable 13th — ahead of teammate Tsunoda, albeit due to a penalty for the Japanese driver. “That’s got to be number one toughest weekend ever, and I would hope that this is not tougher than that, but it’s going to be tricky for sure,” he said. “But obviously I’m grateful to have had those experiences in the past as well. I think they sort of help build you for something like this.” IS HAMILTON OR RUSSELL ANTONELLI’S CLOSEST CHALLENGER? Whether McLaren can genuinely play itself into the championship remains to be seen, but Mercedes vs Ferrari looks achingly close to being the real deal. Andrea Kimi Antonelli has a healthy 50-point lead over Lewis Hamilton and a 59-point advantage over teammate George Russell, while Mercedes is 72 points ahead of Ferrari. But Ferrari has won as many races as Mercedes in the last five events. Some believe it has the better chassis, and its engine upgrade due at the next race in Monza could go some way to equalising the kilowatts disparity too. In the meantime, this weekend’s Zandvoort circuit should suit the car, being less sensitive to power. It’s not definitive yet, but the sense is that Ferrari is moving forwards. “I think hopefully we’re going to continue to progress in development,” Hamilton said, per the F1 website. “The team are working really hard, and I think we’ve got our first little step this weekend, which I’m really grateful for. “Everyone is under a huge amount of pressure to bring parts, as every team is, but we are going in the right direction with the car. “We just focus on doing our job the best we can. I think we can do a better job in the second half, so that’s the goal.” But by rights we should be talking about George Russell before considering Ferrari. In equal machinery to Antonelli but with more experience, he should be presenting a formidable opposition. The first half of his season was poor, however, afflicted by a combination of disappointing pace, bad luck and costly errors. He said he managed to switch off completely from F1 during the break, which he hopes will help to reset his fortunes. But with 12 grands prix in 15 weekends, he won’t have a chance to build himself into the fight. He must hit the ground running lest time run out first. “Every race weekend now is going to be very important,” he said. “You want to build that momentum. “I don’t want to overthink it too much. I just want to trust in my ability and drive a little bit more instinctively, and maybe that’s what I hadn’t been doing before the break — just going in with an open mind and see where it takes me. “I’m just taking it race by race. I know I need to improve the performance if I want to be in the fight, so that’s the main priority. If the performance improves, then the points reduce, and it’s as simple as that, really.” HONDA’S TURNAROUND STARTS HERE Near the back of the grid — or will it be? — Aston Martin is preparing to take another step forward this weekend. Fresh off its massive upgrade package in Hungary, which got Fernando Alonso into Q2 for the first time this season, this weekend Honda will bring its only engine upgrade of the year — what it’s describing as a spec-2 motor. It broke in the engine during a testing day in Budapest just before the midseason break, and though no data was made public, reports are that the upgrade met all of its objectives and that both Honda and Aston Martin were satisfied. Honda has steadfastly refused to talk in kilowatts gained or potential lap time improvements — dangerous ground given this year’s underperformance relative to expectations — but it has talked about significant hardware changes that go to reliability and drivability. Improving both of those characteristics comes with power gains too — a reliable engine can be run harder, and a more drivable engine can be run harder more easily. However, chief engineer Shintaro Orihara has cautioned that the gains may not be fully realised this weekend given the big changes will need adjusting to, and teams have only one practice session to work with. Team boss Adrian Newey said the team would have more aerodynamic upgrades ready for this weekend and again next month. If it all goes to plan, Aston Martin’s trajectory could become the steepest of any team this year.