Zandvoort’s last lap: F1 is back, and a corner says goodbye

The break is over. Formula 1 returns this weekend at Zandvoort, and it returns with an odd note attached: this is the last time. The circuit’s contract ends in 2026 and from 2027 the calendar carries on without it, after thirty-five visits. So Sunday is not just race thirteen. It is the last time a Formula 1 car climbs that banking.

The corner we are about to lose

Zandvoort has plenty going for it, but it has one thing that really matters: the Arie Luyendyk, turn 14, the one that fires the cars back onto the main straight with 18 to 19 degrees of banking. That is not a design curiosity. It is a corner taken with DRS open, because the banking does the job the rear wing normally does, and nothing else on the calendar offers that.

The interesting part is that the idea does not die with the track. The Madring — Madrid’s circuit, which joins the calendar on a ten-year deal — built its signature corner, La Monumental, looking straight at it. Its designers name two references: the Luyendyk at Zandvoort and the Las Ventas bullring. It is 13.5 degrees of banking, a 24% gradient, and half a kilometre of corner.

It is not the same thing, and that is worth saying out loud: 13.5 degrees are not 19. But from next year, anyone who wants to watch a Formula 1 car leaning against the ground will have to look at Madrid. That is the inheritance.

What Zandvoort leaves behind

The track is known for not allowing overtakes, and that is half true: it is narrow, it climbs and drops, and dirty air punishes you. But what it has produced are strange races, which is a different thing. The one everyone here remembers is 2023: Alonso finishing second behind Verstappen, Gasly third, on an impossible afternoon — rain on lap one, more rain around lap fifteen, a downpour on lap sixty-one, a red flag and a restart for the final seven laps.

That is the argument for Zandvoort and against losing it. A circuit where overtaking is hard forces the race to be decided somewhere else: in the stop, in the tyre, in who calls it right when the water starts falling. Less spectacle per lap, more story per race.

A championship nobody saw coming

The second half starts with Andrea Kimi Antonelli leading on 219 points, fifty clear of Lewis Hamilton — second, at Ferrari — and fifty-nine clear of George Russell, his own team-mate.

That last number deserves a pause. Antonelli is not merely holding his own: he is ahead of Russell in the same car, and winning races. A driver who arrives labelled as a prospect is asked to stay out of the way; putting fifty-nine points on the established team-mate in your own garage is a different category of result. He is beating what was expected of him, and not narrowly.

Behind them, McLaren arrive on the up: Lando Norris won in Hungary right before the break and moved to fifth on 128 points. A fifty-point lead with twelve races left is nobody’s sentence.

And we had already measured this

Here we allow ourselves a note from the house. Two weeks ago we published what new regulations do to the grid, based on 1,200 simulated seasons. Two numbers came out of it: in a normal year a car’s performance moves 2.64 points from the previous one, and in the year new rules arrive it moves 8.49. And the consequence: 58% of regulation changes produce a new grid leader.

2026 is the year of the new regulations. And what happened in the first half is exactly the majority case: the grid has been remade and the team in charge is not the team that was in charge. We do not file this as anyone being right — it is a probability, not a prophecy, and the remaining 42% exists — but it is why this season feels different. That is not a feeling. It is what a reset does.

Who gets in the car this weekend

One important piece of the grid changes, and not for sporting reasons. Isack Hadjar misses the race: he injured his wrist training in the gym during the break. In his place, Liam Lawson steps up to Red Bull for what will be his third start with the senior team — a second chance for someone who was already dropped once, which is among the most uncomfortable and most interesting stories of the weekend.

And the knock-on effect delivers the best part: Yuki Tsunoda races again for Racing Bulls alongside Arvid Lindblad, stepping out of the reserve role. It is his ninetieth start with the team he debuted for in 2021.

And it is a sprint weekend

In case the script were not loaded enough, this is the first sprint weekend in Zandvoort’s history — the fifth of six this year. So the farewell does not bring one race, it brings two, with a single practice session before everything starts counting.

Compressed format, narrow track, grandstands sold out in record time, and a circuit that knows it is not coming back. If a strange race was going to break out, the stage is set.

What to watch

Three things. Whether Antonelli confirms the first half was not a run of luck, because a leader fifty points clear manages a weekend differently than one ten points clear. Whether McLaren have genuinely arrived or Hungary was a one-off. And whether Lawson takes his chance, because this is the kind of weekend that settles contracts.

After qualifying we will be back with our own thing: running the real starting grid through the simulator and publishing the percentages before the race is run. The way we did in Hungary, with the hits and the misses.

Sources

Motorsport — championship standings after Hungary · Grande Premio — F1 returns with a sprint for Zandvoort’s farewell · Motorsport — Hadjar to miss the Dutch GP, Lawson confirmed · Motorsport — 2023 Dutch Grand Prix report · Motorsport — the Madring circuit