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At face value Formula 1's 2024 Dutch Grand Prix was a great day for Lando Norris and a sobering one for Max Verstappen.
But that doesn't mean Verstappen drove badly, or that dominant winner Norris was the top performer of the weekend - at least in Edd Straw's eyes. Read on for his full ranking of the field's Zandvoort efforts from best to worst.
How do the rankings work? The 20 drivers will be ranked in order of performance from best to worst on each grand prix weekend. This will be based on the full range of criteria, ranging from pace and racecraft to consistency and whether they made key mistakes. How close each driver got to delivering on the maximum performance potential of the car will be an essential consideration.
It’s important to note both that this reflects performance across the entire weekend, cognisant of the fact that qualifying is effectively ‘lap 0’ of the race and key to laying the foundations to the race, and that it is not a ranking of the all-round qualities of each driver. It’s simply about how they performed on a given weekend. Therefore, the ranking will fluctuate significantly from weekend to weekend.
And with each of the 10 cars fundamentally having different performance potential and ‘luck’ (i.e. factors outside of a driver’s control) contributing to the way the weekend plays out, this ranking will also differ significantly from the overall results.
Started: 6th Finished: 3rd
Given Ferrari struggled more than expected at Zandvoort, in qualifying at least, Charles Leclerc produced an outstanding weekend to take a podium on merit. He did what he could in qualifying, jumped Sergio Perez at the start, undercut his way past George Russell and Oscar Piastri at the pitstops, then did a good job to keep the McLaren behind in the second stint.
Verdict: Overachieved.
Started: 1st Finished: 1st
Yes, the McLaren was the fastest car but Norris was utterly in control in qualifying and the race - save for the start where he slipped to second after picking up wheelspin.
To his credit, he managed the chase of Max Verstappen well and made a DRS-assisted pass at the second time of asking before disappearing up the road.
Verdict: Other than the start, nailed everything.
Started: 2nd Finished: 2nd
It wasn’t what the home crowd wanted, but Verstappen should be very satisfied with second on the grid and a distant second in the race given the Red Bull was at a marked disadvantage to McLaren - and he was running a floor spec reckoned to be a couple of tenths of a second slower than what Perez ran.
Other than perhaps losing a little time to being a bit too aggressive on the brakes at Turn 11 on his Q3 lap, which made no difference to the outcome of qualifying, Verstappen extracted everything he could from a tricky car.
Verdict: Got the most out of the car.
Started: 9th Finished: 9th
Pierre Gasly struggled at the start of the weekend but produced an outstanding qualifying session followed by a superb race to ‘win’ the midfield fight.
A good start to get around both Aston Martins, then holding off Fernando Alonso’s counter-attack and inching away, laid the foundations for that.
Fast, incisive in battle, error-free.
Verdict: Star of the midfield.
Started: 19th Finished: 14th
Alex Albon revelled in the upgraded Williams and pieced together a superb qualifying session to take eighth. That his floor was, by 0.3mm, illegal, was neither his fault nor gave him a performance advantage.
From the back row, he was on a hiding to nothing but being the first to pit meant he undercut his way to the periphery of the top 10 before being backed up by Kevin Magnussen and losing positions.
Verdict: Strong performance wasted.
Started: 7th Finished: 10th
Fernando Alonso looked to be on the back foot compared to Aston Martin team-mate Lance Stroll, but produced a strong Q3 lap to head the midfield.
Losing out to Gasly on the first lap when the Alpine driver got around the outside of him at Turn 1 probably cost Alonso ‘Class B’ victory given the pace of the two cars was close enough that track position made the difference.
Verdict: Didn’t quite maximise the result.
Started: 10th Finished: 5th
Carlos Sainz had little dry running before qualifying thanks to a gearbox problem in FP2 and the wet conditions.
He showed decent pace in Q1, but struggled in Q2 and, along with hitting traffic, that led to his elimination.
Sainz made up for that with an incisive first stint to climb to seventh, then passed Perez in the second stint and picked up another place when Russell, who he was closing on, made a second stop.
Verdict: Recovered well on Sunday.
Started: 4th Finished: 7th
While he struggled with nailing the tyre temperatures in qualifying, Russell did a better job on Saturday than his Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton, putting himself in a good position for the race.
He took third from Piastri at the start, but lost a position to Leclerc’s undercut before being repassed by Piastri in the second stint.
As Russell was falling into Sainz’s clutches, he gambled on a second stop for softs that didn’t pay off and also dropped him behind Perez on a day when Mercedes struggled for pace on the hards.
Verdict: Second stop compromised result.
Started: 5th Finished: 6th
The results on paper were reasonable, but although Perez at least delivered solid points for Red Bull and was positive about progress he was perhaps fortunate not to be a place or two worse off given he could easily have been beaten by a Mercedes or two.
He ran a different spec to Verstappen, with a more recent quicker version of the floor, but was disappointed with his race pace.
Verdict: No more than solid.
Started: 3rd Finished: 4th
The half-second deficit to McLaren team-mate Norris in qualifying exaggerated Piastri’s disadvantage. A tenth down after the first Q3 runs, he only improved slightly on his second Q2 lap so ended up being jumped by Verstappen.
Slipping behind Russell at the start set the tone for a race in which Piastri was mostly parked in dirty air, running longer in the first stint then overtaking Russell for fourth but then getting stuck behind Leclerc.
Verdict: Not quite at Norris’s level.
Started: 14th Finished: 8th
An error on his final Q2 lap led to Hamilton’s elimination, although fundamentally his pace was plenty good enough to have made the top 10.
His disappointment was compounded by a three-place grid penalty for impeding Perez that was perhaps a little harsh, which made for a difficult race.
Hamilton made good progress in the first stint and eventually cleared the midfield but couldn’t make more gains, opting for a second pitstop to take softs given it didn’t cost him a place. But that didn’t unlock enough pace to improve on eighth.
Verdict: Q2 failure did the damage.
Started: 8th Finished: 13th
Stroll was on target to outqualify Aston Martin team-mate Alonso, but on his final Q3 lap made “a few mistakes, just not putting everything together”.
He initially ran with Alonso but gradually leaked time to him and was unable to follow him past Nico Hulkenberg in the second stint, with a lock-up coming into the pits meaning he was hit with a five-second penalty that ultimately cost him a place to Daniel Ricciardo.
Verdict: Promising weekend lost momentum.
Started: 11th Finished: 17th
Yuki Tsunoda qualified decently, making Q2 while team-mate Ricciardo fell in Q1, which was about right for the pace of the RB.
However, Tsunoda’s race started to go wrong from lights out as after opting for softs for the first stint he lost a place to Hulkenberg before being shuffled back to 13th by Hamilton. His two-stopper didn’t work out, leaving him well down the order.
Verdict: Quick but race didn’t go well.
Started: 13th Finished: 12th
Ricciardo struggled on Friday but felt the reasons for that had been solved before what still turned out a difficult qualifying session, when he fell in Q1 after lapping over three tenths slower than RB team-mate Tsunoda.
Considering the pace of the car, he drove a decent race on a one-stopper, chasing Stroll to the chequered flag and picking up a place thanks to the Aston Martin driver’s five-second penalty.
Verdict: Iffy qualifying took the edge off.
Started: 16th Finished: 19th
In a season when life as a Sauber driver has been particularly difficult, this was the toughest weekend yet.
Valtteri Bottas described Zandvoort as “highlighting the weaknesses of the car”, struggling with tyre degradation across all three compounds and unable to hang onto the 14th place he held in the early gong.
He beat the only driver he realistically could have done: his team-mate Zhou Guanyu.
Verdict: Impossible to impress in the machinery.
Started: 12th Finished: 11th
Practice went horrendously for Hulkenberg, who crashed twice among other offs as he battled braking troubles.
In the circumstances, qualifying went reasonably as despite struggling for rhythm and consistency in the car he did a reasonable job to outqualify Haas team-mate Magnussen by eight-hundredths.
The race went well - Hulkenberg stopping early then completing a marathon stint on hards to take 11th. But even with an orthodox strategy a point would have been difficult.
Verdict: Untidy weekend, decent result.
Started: 15th Finished: 15th
Esteban Ocon was frustrated Alpine didn’t seem to be taking his feedback seriously in qualifying, complaining that “there’s a lack of grip, the car is not behaving as it has done in the past” with hints that a chassis change might have been responsible. That manifested itself with a litany of snaps in qualifying and a Q1 exit after lapping 0.277s slower than team-mate Gasly.
He continued to struggle in the race and spent most of it running from 14th-16th place, feeling he’d done the maximum on a difficult weekend.
Verdict: Not at Gasly’s level.
Started: 17th Finished: 20th
There was little Zhou could do to make an impression on a dreadful weekend for Sauber.
Changes for Saturday meant the car was even more inconsistent in qualifying, hence the exaggerated gap to Bottas, while in the race a strangely short stint on mediums laid the foundations for a two-stopper that left him half a minute off the back.
Verdict: A futile weekend.
Started: 20th (pits) Finished: 18th
Magnussen felt he had the pace to be a few places higher on the grid, but “got on the power too early at the exit of Turn 3” and cost himself around 0.15s, meaning he failed to improve on his first Q2 run time.
After a promising first lap, passing Zhou into Turn 11, he locked up and went off while trying to go around the outside of Logan Sargeant and lost ground, with his long first stint allowing him to get in the way of team-mate Hulkenberg’s rivals on his way to beating only the Saubers.
Verdict: A patchy weekend.
Started: 18th Finished: 16th
Sargeant ruined his weekend and tested the dwindling reserves of his team’s patience with a needless crash in FP3 that destroyed a Williams upgrade package.
Inevitably, from the ninth row he had an unremarkable race on a one-stopper in which he admitted he “lacked pace”.
Verdict: Inexcusable shunt ruined weekend.
