Sainz gets no explanation for mystery penalty - 2025 Dutch GP takeaways

The Dutch Grand Prix marked a significant swing in the championship battle as Oscar Piastri won and McLaren team-mate Lando Norris retired to leave the Australian with a significant points advantage.

Ferrari’s race was so bad that it even compromised its Italian Grand Prix, while Carlos Sainz was robbed of his best result of the year by a penalty most struggled to understand.

Here are the main takeaways from the Dutch GP weekend.

Piastri got the lucky break he deserved

As harsh as it was for Norris to come out of Zandvoort with a 34-point deficit to Piastri to no fault of his own, it was also somewhat fitting that the Australian finally got a bit of a lucky break.

The championship situation before the Dutch Grand Prix didn’t reflect how strong Piastri has been all season, and in particular in the last few races before the summer break.

The Aussie won the Belgian GP, but he should have also won the British and Hungarian Grands Prix, at least from the perspective of being the stronger McLaren driver.

At Silverstone, Piastri did make a mistake – although it was quite a marginal one – and at the Hungaroring, he was only beaten by Norris as a result of McLaren’s strategy decision.

These things are always subjective, of course, and racing is full of ‘ifs’ that never get the kind of payback Piastri got at Zandvoort.

Nonetheless, his masterful display of control and coolness in the Netherlands, plus Norris’ DNF, gave him back what he had lost in the previous races, and it felt like some justice was restored.

Perhaps the 34-point gap seems excessive given how close Piastri and Norris have been this year, but the Australian’s Zandvoort triumph wasn’t just luck; it was the culmination of consistent performance, precise execution, and coolness under pressure.

In a season defined by incredibly fine margins, the Dutch GP acted as a course correction, as harsh as it was for Norris’s championship hopes.

Ferrari’s nightmare day will hurt even the next race

Ferrari’s Dutch Grand Prix was a pretty accurate summary of the Scuderia’s season: from being completely lost, to looking promising, to ending up with nothing to show for.

On Friday, Ferrari was nowhere, baffled by its lack of pace as it looked set for another disastrous weekend. Then on Saturday, it found a solution and had a decent qualifying, although it was still outqualified by a Racing Bull and a Mercedes.

On Sunday, however, it got slapped with a double DNF that left it with zero points for the first time this year.

Lewis Hamilton‘s mistake had nothing to do with the team and ironically happened when the Briton appeared to have similar pace to Charles Leclerc.

On top of that, Hamilton got a five-place grid penalty for Monza after speeding during on his reconnaissance lap in Zandvoort, already compromising his chances in his first Italian GP as a Ferrari driver.

Unlike Hamilton’s case, Ferrari was at least partly to blame for Leclerc’s accident, as its decision to react to Kimi Antonelli‘s pitstop put the Monegasque within striking distance of the Italian.

Granted, Leclerc did nothing wrong, but he probably shouldn’t have been in that position to begin with.

Hadjar looks like the best of Red Bull’s alternatives

There was some irony in Yuki Tsunoda finally scoring some points for the first time in eight races on the day when Isack Hadjar wrapped up a sensational weekend to secure his first Formula 1 podium.

Hadjar has not only been the most consistently impressive rookie of the season, but also the second most consistent Red Bull-backed driver behind Max Verstappen.

His Dutch Grand Prix weekend was his strongest display so far: he qualified fourth on merit and looked set to stay there until he benefited from Norris’s retirement to move up to third.

Hadjar had the upper hand on George Russell and both Ferraris for much of the weekend, and didn’t put a foot wrong to become the second Red Bull driver to finish on the podium this year.

Tsunoda’s time at Red Bull Racing is likely coming to an end following 2025, and Hadjar looks like the best candidate to replace him.

Yes, there’s the argument that the team won’t want to repeat the same mistakes it made in promoting a young driver too quickly, only to be destroyed by Verstappen.

But the alternative would be looking outside its driver pool and, unless they can somehow get Russell, there aren’t many viable options available anyway.

The summer break reset didn’t help under-pressure drivers much

Tsunoda was one of the drivers who needed the summer break to try to re-ignite his season, but the Zandvoort weekend highlighted how his issues go beyond what a three-week vacation can fix.

The Japanese driver was half a second off Verstappen’s pace in qualifying and would not have scored in the race if not for all the retirements ahead of him. Tsunoda did have to deal with a problem with his throttle, but even before that, his race didn’t look very promising.

There are suggestions that Tsunoda now has a deadline to turn his form around, but it’s hard to imagine that happening now if it hasn’t happened in his first 13 races with Red Bull.

The summer break reset also didn’t appear to do much for Hamilton. The seven-time champion was closer to Leclerc this time out, but still made a rather uncharacteristic error that made him crash and left him without points for the second race running.

On top of that, his yellow-flag infringement means he is already in for a difficult weekend at Monza, where he will be wearing red overalls for the first time.

Antonelli also needed to rebound after a difficult run of races before the summer break, and like in Hamilton’s case, there were positives and negatives to the Italian’s Zandvoort weekend.

On the one hand, his pace wasn’t that far off from Russell’s and he was having a decent race. On the other hand, like Hamilton, he also made two costly mistakes, first in taking out Leclerc and then in speeding in the pitlane, eventually dropping out of the points.

In less than a week, the young Italian will be racing at home, and in the meantime, will need to focus on the positives from Zandvoort without dwelling on the mistakes if he is to turn the corner.

Sainz was robbed in one of his strongest weekends

Carlos Sainz indignantly labelled his Dutch Grand Prix penalty as “unacceptable” after losing what looked like a certain fifth-place finish.

The Williams driver had qualified strongly and was set for his best result of the season when he and Liam Lawson made contact as the Spaniard was trying to overtake the Kiwi around Turn 1.