The England national football team is known for often losing penalty shootouts in major tournaments, but the Three Lions actually have a success rate of 36.36%.

That’s infinitely better than Lando Norris’s success rate when it comes to defending the lead from pole position. He started from the front five times in F1 and lost the lead each time.

In addition, he always lost the lead to another driver. The last time in Hungary it was his teammate Oscar Piastri, and before that there were four other incidents.

This means that the English football team is many times more successful at winning penalty shootouts than Norris is at holding his lead until the first corner when starting from pole position.

On Sunday, the driver of the number four car will attempt to lead the field at the start of a Grand Prix for the fourth time – and the third time this season. Alongside him on the front row will be Max Verstappen, who will be looking to continue Norris’s losing streak. Not only is he the driver Norris is trying to chase in the World Championship over the final ten rounds of the season, but he is also the one the several thousand fans who flock to the Zandvoort circuit will be cheering for throughout the race.

Overtaking is possible at Zandvoort, but by no means easy. The narrowness of the track gives the leading driver an advantage, limiting overtaking opportunities for the biggest and heaviest cars in Formula 1. This means that if Norris wants to start the second phase of the season in the best possible way and take his second win of the year, he will have to defend the lead from the first start to achieve this goal.

But Norris insists he is not worried about his conversion rate ahead of the Grand Prix.

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“I know my statistics aren’t the best for that,” said the pole winner. “And most of the time I’ve fallen back rather than holding my positions. But that’s just what I’ve done so far. And I’ve worked hard and am working hard to change that.”

“I’m not going to go out tomorrow and suddenly try to prove people wrong or anything like that. I’m just going to keep going and do what I have to do.”

Weather

Weather has played a recurring role in many race weekends during the middle stages of the championship, and this was no different at Zandvoort, where wet or intermediate tyres were required in two of the four F1 track sessions so far.

Fortunately, the chances of rain returning to hamper the weekend’s most important session are much lower. Current forecasts suggest a chance of rain of around 10% until lights-out at 3pm, with the clouds eventually clearing as the race progresses.

But even more influential than the rain will be the wind. This has been a stormy Grand Prix weekend like no other so far, and virtually every driver in the field said they struggled with the unpredictable balance of their cars in the wind. On Sunday, drivers are still expected to face winds of up to 20 mph during the 72 laps of racing.

“If you look at the car’s numbers in terms of kilograms of power, downforce gained and lost, it’s pretty extreme,” explained Norris after qualifying. “Probably more than people on the outside realise. Everyone is struggling with the same problem and that’s the challenge we face.”

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start

Norris will attempt to successfully defend his lead from pole position for the first time in his Formula One career on Sunday, while Verstappen will look to maintain his perfect record of leading the first lap at every home Grand Prix of his career.

However, one big difference between the three circuits where Norris has started from pole position so far – Sochi, Barcelona and the Hungaroring – and Zandvoort is that the route to the first corner on Sunday will be much shorter. While the previous three circuits have seen an average distance of 617 metres from pole position to the first corner, this time Norris will only have to maintain a lead of 265 metres.

Even if Norris does indeed leave Tarzan, that is not the end of the story. The “start” of the race will stretch from the first corner to the extremely banked third corner of Hugenholtz. If Verstappen is able to hang on to Norris at the first corner, then the unique nature of the third corner could give him a second chance to close in on the McLaren driver and take the lead – something Norris will have to continue to watch out for.

strategy

With conditions expected to remain dry throughout the race, teams will be glad to have more sets of slicks due to the reduced dry practice time.

While last year’s race was marred by rain on the first lap, the first two races at the new Zandvoort in 2021 and 2022 were dry throughout. In both races, Verstappen used all three dry compounds for at least one part of the race – he started on the soft tyres both times before switching to the medium tyres for his second stint and the hard tyres for his final stint.

However, Pirelli expects the race to be different this year and predicts that a one-stop strategy will be the best approach to the race. Once again, the recommendation is to fit soft tyres at the start of the race before switching to hard tyres between laps 24 and 30 to finish the race.

Track position is particularly important at Zandvoort as there are limited overtaking opportunities outside the DRS main straight on the pit lane, so clear air is a must. If third-placed Oscar Piastri can overtake Verstappen early and give McLaren a one-two, that numerical advantage could prove crucial for McLaren.

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Overtaking

While numerous overtaking maneuvers have been successfully carried out in the first three Zandvoort Grands Prix on the calendar, there is only one place that drivers will pay attention to when planning maneuvers: the main DRS zone along the pit lane.

A good exit from the penultimate corner of Turn 13 is crucial to carry speed through the banked final corner before entering the pit lane, but just being within DRS range is not enough to guarantee an overtake at the first corner, Tarzan.

In the last dry race of 2022, Lewis Hamilton failed to overtake Carlos Sainz Jr. for several laps at the start, despite being within a second for most of the first 13 laps of the race. Similarly, Sainz then managed to keep Sergio Perez at bay lap after lap in the closing stages, having passed the Red Bull following a late safety car restart.

It will be crucial for all drivers to overtake their competitors early, be it at the start of the first laps of a stint.

Security vehicles

Because the corners are tight and there is not much run-off, any collision, incident or interruption on the Zandvoort track can lead to a safety car deployment. However, because the track layout is more suited to single-row racing, this also reduces the risk of collisions somewhat.

Of the two dry races held since the circuit returned to the calendar, one was held without a safety car at all in 2021. In 2022, there were two outings: the first when Yuki Tsunoda’s AlphaTauri stalled on track and the second when Valtteri Bottas stalled with a fuel system failure on the way to Tarzan.

If there is a safety car on Sunday, it will be a rarity. There has not been a full safety car deployment since the Canadian Grand Prix in early June, and there has only been one lap under a virtual safety car since the Norris-Verstappen collision in Austria.

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One to watch

An obvious choice when it comes to choosing the driver to watch in the back of the field this weekend is the winner of two of the last three Grands Prix: Hamilton.

The Mercedes driver was optimistic about his team’s prospects for the rest of the weekend after Friday’s practice session, but he was eliminated from Q2 along with fellow surprise driver Sainz. Things got even worse for Hamilton, however, when he was given a three-place grid penalty for impeding Perez in Q1. This means he will start the race from 14th place.

Mercedes’ race pace has been impressive in the final laps and with George Russell at the front of the field, it will be exciting to see how much ground Hamilton can make up over the course of the race and how quickly he will do so.

Now it’s your turn

Will Norris be able to hold off Verstappen at the start and throughout the race? Let us know your thoughts on the Dutch Grand Prix in the comments.

Dutch Grand Prix 2024

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