By: The Zandvoort circuit, broadly comparable to the Hungarian track in terms of the characteristics a car needs to be competitive, allows us to assess the progress made by the teams during the summer break. As a reminder, in our ‘Mind the Gap’ feature, we assess only the outright performance of the drivers and cars in qualifying, setting aside what happened in the race.
Measuring performance through a single fastest lap naturally carries a degree of uncertainty, but it gives us a concrete benchmark to work from. Before getting back into the lap times, however, we must point out that Ferrari did not have a good Saturday afternoon. The Maranello team probably underperformed, while Aston Martin, also given Alonso's race result, may have sacrificed a little in qualifying to have a better car on Sunday.
McLaren confirmed, Ferrari the only team not to improve
That said, just as in Hungary, Lando Norris's McLaren is on pole position. The driver repeated both pole and victory in the Netherlands, confirming the progress made by the reigning world champion team, at least on circuits where strong traction and agility through slower corners are required. More or less everyone else made progress as well.
The only team to be slower than in Budapest was the Ferrari SF-26, undoubtedly flunked on its return from the holidays. Above all for the reasons mentioned previously. Red Bull, VCARB and Aston Martin were more or less unchanged in terms of their gap to the leader. Alpine and Mercedes made slight progress, while Haas, Audi and Cadillac made significant gains.
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Impressive Williams, then something goes wrong
Williams made by far the biggest step forward, at least over a single lap, improving by more than a second with Alexander Albon. Unfortunately, something went wrong in the race and the Grove team was nowhere near the level of the cars fighting for the top 10. The late collision between Albon and Sainz was merely the fitting conclusion to a Sunday to forget.
Cover photo by Luca Martini / WHYOUT Images
All the news, photos, weather, session times and times from the Dutch GP 2026
