The last Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, and Verstappen wants to win it again
A sprint weekend for the first time, a power unit upgrade for Aston Martin, rain that could finally break F1’s dry-season streak, and a home crowd that won’t get another chance after this one.
Formula 1 returns from its summer break at Circuit Zandvoort for round 12, and this one comes with an asterisk: it's the last Dutch Grand Prix under the promoter's current agreement with the sport. Barring a new deal materialising, the dunes won't host a round of the championship again after this weekend — which makes it a fitting, if slightly melancholy, way to restart the second half of the season.
It's also new territory for the event itself. This is the fifth of six sprint weekends on the 2026 calendar, and the first time the Dutch Grand Prix has used the format in any of its six editions since returning in 2021. That means a single hour of practice on Friday before Sprint Qualifying, the Sprint itself on Saturday morning followed by qualifying for Sunday's race in the afternoon, and the 72-lap Grand Prix on Sunday at 15:00 local time (14:00 BST) — no second or third practice session to fall back on if a car doesn't feel right straight out of the box.
Antonelli arrives with the biggest cushion he's carried all year: 50 points clear of Hamilton in second, with Russell a further nine back in third. It's a slightly stranger lead than the gap suggests, though — by pure form over the last five races, Antonelli has actually been only the fourth-best driver on the grid. The points have kept accumulating regardless, which says as much about what's gone wrong for his rivals as what's gone right for him.
Aston Martin's rebuild moves to its second phase this weekend. Honda brings a new power unit to Zandvoort, the follow-up to the AMR26 chassis and aero overhaul the team debuted in Hungary. Whether that first phase actually worked will shape how much patience the paddock has for a power unit upgrade arriving on top of it — our full breakdown of what changed and why is worth a read before the sessions start.
None of that will matter much to the crowd. Zandvoort's return to the calendar in 2021 turned it into one of the sport's great party atmospheres, built almost entirely around one driver, and Verstappen goes into what may be his final home race here chasing a fourth win at his own Grand Prix. Whatever else this weekend decides, the orange army will be out in full force for it.
The forecast adds one more variable: rain is expected to hit the track on Saturday, during the Sprint. There hasn't been a genuinely wet session anywhere on the calendar all season, despite the threat of one on several occasions — Zandvoort's dunes, with their banked corners and famously low grip when damp, would be a dramatic place for that run to finally end.