Max Verstappen was happy to take the F1 Dutch GP result after turnaround, as he talks about Lap 1 plus strategy, where Laurent Mekies adds his bit.
It wasn’t the best of Fridays for Red Bull to start F1 Dutch GP weekend at Zandvoort. But Verstappen took a bright step in qualifying to secure a Top 3 finish, when even Top 5 looked difficult at one stage. In the grand prix as well, he pulled a scary move on Lando Norris at Turn 3 to snatch second.
He went offline on the dusty part and survived a snap to slot behind Oscar Piastri. He knew it will be difficult to hold Norris off, but he had to try something, which even surprised team boss Mekies. “The start was alright, to be honest,” said Verstappen to media. “Then I tried to go around the outside in Turn 1.
“Then into Turn 2, but there’s always a lot of sand in that corner from the middle of the track to the edge. With the soft compound I just still pushed the entry and then went a bit sideways heading into Turn 3, but it was all okay. I still wanted to have a bit of fun out there. When I got ahead, I just followed my pace and that meant at one point Lando got ahead again.
“You could see, I mean, it’s a different league. There’s no point trying to ruin your own race defending really hard or losing two, three laps defending for your life. Unfortunately, there’s no point in that,” summed up Verstappen, as Mekies added his bit where he was taken aback as was the rest of Red Bull crew for brief millisecond when the Dutchman had a snap.
“I tell you what, on the pit wall lap one, as much as we worked with him everyday, we were still amazed by what he managed to pull off,” said Mekies to media. “So that’s how it was. It was like, how did he do that? How did he make the move and how did he keep it on track? So, again, it’s a bit like in Spa, when he got the McLaren on the sprint start.
“He knew he had one shot, he knew it was now, and he gave it all and he still leaves us with no words when you see that. So, big well done. And you’re right, with one of the lightweights, you know him very well,” summed up Mekies, who also clarified what they changed on the grid when mechanics were working at the front of Verstappen’s car.
“On the grid, we just wanted to make sure that one part of the front wing was secured properly to the front wing,” he said. “So, there is a small gurney on the front wing flap, and we felt it was moving a bit, it was not secured properly. So we just made sure that we rebounded the car.”
In terms of strategy, Red Bull opted an aggressive approach with the use of soft compound at the start and also after the last safety car. They felt, it was the only way to try and hustle the McLaren pair ahead, even though they risked high degradation, which did hurt Verstappen in the first stint where Isack Hadjar managed to stay with him all-through.
“I mean, we take it,” said Verstappen. “Qualifying was good. I hoped for a little bit more, but quite quickly I realized the pace was not there. It always seems like in the race we just struggle more than over one lap with the tyre behaviour, with the car, and that was very obvious again. So, I just tried to manage my pace, but that basically meant it was more of a fight with the cars behind me than whatever was happening in front of me.
“That[strategy] for me felt the best after Friday. So that was planned. And of course, with the Safety Cars everyone has to box again to take fresh tyres. But yeah, it was all according to plan,” summed up Verstappen, as Mekies added: “It was a combination of several things. I guess, at first, it was the only chance we could at least temporarily get to fight with the McLaren.
“We knew they had a very significant pace advantage. It’s never crystal clear how long before you can hold the car behind you even if it’s faster than you. So we knew at the start, it’s a decent advantage. We were, I think, the only car in the top ten to have a new set of softs. So we knew the other guys would not be too tempted to go for it.
“And in fairness, Max had not been exactly super happy with his hard run on Friday. And so the perspective to do medium-hard was not super exciting for us. So we knew soft-medium would have been super aggressive. But that’s the choice we’d make to do the super aggressive one. So, obviously it exposed Max in the second part of the stint on soft. So we had to deal with it. But he managed to do a very good job and probably would have made it in a soft-medium straight race.”
Here’s Lap 1 move from Max Verstappen: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-dutch-grand-prix-all-the-angles-of-verstappens-dramatic-start-at-zandvoort.1841981628531813331
Here’s Lando Norris retaking the place: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-dutch-grand-prix-norris-snatches-p2-back-from-verstappen-on-lap-9.1841978704408042128
Here’s Yuki Tsunoda on double trouble
Here’s Lando Norris on getting passed by Max Verstappen