Lando Norris was fastest in second practice for this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix, the McLaren driver set an 11.330 on the hard tyre which put him two hundredths faster than Max Verstappen. McLaren go into this weekend hoping to build on the strong July as they closed up on the midfield leaders.<\/p>\n
Verstappen however remains the favourite with Red Bull winning every race this season, but the two-time champion was unable to complete his lap after the session was red-flagged. Both Daniel Ricciardo and Oscar Piastri crashed at the same time in separate incidents at Hugenholtz.<\/p>\n
The Dutchman goes into his third home Grand Prix of the season five race wins ahead of teammate Sergio Perez, he is looking for a record-equalling ninth successive race victory. Norris’ performance suggests McLaren could be in the hunt for pole on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Norris’ pace in the McLaren underlined the progress the team have made with an upgrade in Austria at the start of last month, since on average they have been the second-fastest team in qualifying on average.<\/p>\n
Norris took successive second places in Britain and Hungary, but regression in Belgium left some uncertainty over whether the British team could continue to compete at the front of the grid after the summer break. But McLaren\u2019s odds of beating Red Bull are no different given the fact the team are on a thirteen-race win run.<\/p>\n
Even if McLaren can challenge in qualifying it would be a huge upset for the Orange Army of Verstappen fans, but Red Bull still look to have a comfortable two-tenths on McLaren and half a second on Ferrari on the race runs.<\/p>\n
Alex Albon was third for Williams going two-tenths behind Verstappen and four hundredths faster than the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton. Th Mercedes drivers doing their early runs on the medium tyres, before Hamilton was able to move ahead of George Russell.<\/p>\n
Hamilton looking as well to be a potential challenger to Verstappen over one lap, suggesting perhaps Red Bull\u2019s renewed advantage from upgrades in Budapest is stabilising. Norris\u2019s teammate Piastri was unable to show his pace because of the mistake at Hugenholtz.<\/p>\n
Also desperate to end Red Bull’s dominance is Hamilton, who continued the strong form he showed before the summer break to once more comfortably outperform team-mate George Russell on Friday.<\/p>\n
Hamilton still looking to be the first driver to win a Grand Prix after three hundredth start, the only other driver who can do that is his long-time rival, Fernando Alonso.<\/p>\n
Daniel Ricciardo then went into the back of his fellow Australian, the Alpha Tauri driver not having time to react and joined Piastri him in the wall. Ricciardo then complained about hurting his wrist in the accident, he failed to get his hand off the wheel before the car hit the barriers, and afterwards went to see a doctor about the injury, then was taken to hospital for further checks.<\/p>\n
Yuki Tsunoda was fifth, the Alpha Tauri driver going four hundredths faster than his former teammate Pierre Gasly. Sergio Perez put his Red Bull seventh, four tenths off his teammate Verstappen, he might have a huge challenge ahead and he needs a huge turnaround as well as luck to stop Verstappen.<\/p>\n
Lance Stroll was eighth just under two hundredths behind Perez, once one of Red Bull\u2019s closest challengers this season Aston Martin has struggled to keep up the rate of development and remain in the top four alongside Mercedes and Ferrari.<\/p>\n
Valtteri Bottas split the two Astons, he was two hundredths behind the Canadian and ahead of Fernando Alonso by eight hundredths. Stroll had missed out on running in FP1 because of a car issue, then on one of his qualifying simulations ran wide at Turn Eleven and Hans Ernst Bocht.<\/p>\n
Ferrari also looked to struggle to find the form to challenge Red Bull, Charles Leclerc eleventh and Carlos Sainz sixteenth, over three quarters of a second off the pace. But the Spaniard was on the back foot having missed FP1 as reserve driver Robert Shwartzman filled in.<\/p>\n
Sainz had his exploring to do, also being caught out in the same place as Stroll and then in the closing moments went wide at Kumhobocht. But the Ferrari driver ended the session in sixteenth, over seven and a half tenths off the pace.<\/p>\n
Kevin Magnussen was seventeenth, just over three tenths behind Sainz and he had the same margin over his Haas teammate Nico Hulkenberg. While the incident between Piastri and Ricciardo left them at the bottom of the timing sheets.<\/p>\n
Lando Norris was fastest in second practice for this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix, the McLaren driver set an 11.330 on the hard tyre which put him two hundredths faster than Max Verstappen. McLaren go into this weekend hoping to build on the strong July as they closed up on the midfield leaders. Verstappen however remains<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11840,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[53,103,198,199,423,589,590,664,707,754,765,1131,1283,1287,1290,1298,1401,1439,1572,1637,1642,1843,2149,2152,2190],"class_list":["post-12436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-analysis","tag-53","tag-alex-albon","tag-aston-martin","tag-aston-martin-mercedes","tag-circuit-zandvoort","tag-dutch-gp","tag-dutch-grand-prix","tag-f1","tag-fernando-alonso","tag-formula-one","tag-fp","tag-lando-norris","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mclaren","tag-mclaren-mercedes","tag-mercedes","tag-netherlands","tag-north-holland","tag-practice-reports","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-williams","tag-williams-mercedes","tag-zandvoort"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12437,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12436\/revisions\/12437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}