The banked Luyendyk corner was still damp when Max Verstappen tried to get on the throttle. The Red Bull snapped, hit the outside wall almost head-on, then slid across the track and slapped the inside barrier. Race director Rui Marques threw the red flag before the field had completed a full racing lap.
“Then, yeah, I got caught out. It was still quite wet in that corner, and as soon as I saw the dry patch coming, I was like, ‘Now you can accelerate’, but clearly that didn’t work. So probably it was still a bit too early,” Verstappen told reporters afterwards.
The four-time world champion said the impact was “a decent hit” but that he had “had worse.” Team radio picked up his apology to the Red Bull garage almost immediately.
Sick all weekend, seventh on the grid
The crash closed a weekend Verstappen had barely survived off the track either. He had arrived at Zandvoort on the Thursday with flu-like symptoms, pulled out of parts of his media programme and admitted on Saturday that his condition had worsened, telling RacingNews365 he had felt unwell all weekend and that by qualifying day it felt “even worse.”
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He qualified seventh, his lowest ever starting position at his home race, on a track where he had won the first three modern editions.
The Delftware helmet reveal
For the final Zandvoort weekend, Verstappen unveiled a white-and-navy helmet inspired by Delftware, the traditional Dutch pottery, complete with a heraldic lion on the crown. “For my last home race. Dankjewel Zandvoort,” he wrote alongside the reveal.
The circuit is dropping off the Formula 1 calendar after 2026, with the promoter opting not to renew the contract, so Sunday was Verstappen’s last competitive appearance in front of the orange-clad grandstands in a grand prix car.
Norris wins as Red Bull’s home story ends
The race, once it finally restarted, went to Lando Norris. The McLaren driver converted pole into a second consecutive win, finishing more than 11 seconds clear of Mercedes’ Andrea Kimi Antonelli, with George Russell completing the podium.
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Verstappen was already back in the Red Bull motorhome by then. Asked to sum up how the weekend had gone, he did not try to dress it up.
“This weekend, of course, [was] disappointing. I think disappointing pace, and a disappointing end to the weekend. I think you can sum it up like that,” he said on the official F1 channel.
He also drew a broader line under Red Bull’s afternoon, calling the team “the fourth-fastest” behind McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes and warning that Zandvoort was never going to produce “magic things.”
The next round is the Italian Grand Prix at Monza the following weekend.
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