Oscar Piastri pipped Lando Norris to pole position at the Dutch Grand Prix by just 12-thousandths of a second. Max Verstappen will start third ahead of Isack Hadjar, who punched in a stellar lap, while Lance Stroll crashed out for the second time this weekend.
Immediately, there was a scare for Stroll’s engineers. The Aston Martin racer spun at high speed coming out of the penultimate corner, clattering the barriers. Despite the heavy hit, he was able to drive back to the pit lane with what looked like a shattered front wing, but there was additional damage on his AMR25, and his qualifying session was cut short.
While McLaren set a strong benchmark as expected, Ferrari struggled for pace at the back-end of the top 10, while Yuki Tsunoda was also at risk of elimination. Both Haas drivers joined Stroll in the bottom five, along with Nico Hulkenberg, who has struggled for form on Saturdays lately, and the under-pressure Franco Colapinto.
McLaren retained their two-tenth advantage over the rest of the field in Q2 with Verstappen and the two Ferrari drivers close behind, but there were problems for Mercedes, who were off the pace relative to their Constructors’ Championship rivals.
This culminated in another premature qualifying exit for Kimi Antonelli, who was bumped from the top-10 by Fernando Alonso and Liam Lawson, both of whom improved at the last second. Tsunoda was also knocked out in the second part of qualifying.
After the first Q3 runs, Piastri had the upper hand on Norris by 12-thousandths of a second. Both drivers threatened to improve the second time around, but ultimately ended up slower. The big leap forward instead came from Hadjar, with the Racing Bulls rookie scoring his career-best qualifying finish in fourth place.
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