What Happened at Zandvoort?
We arrived in the Netherlands looking to continue our fine pre-Summer Shutdown form but experienced a weekend as up and down as the Dunes around the Zandvoort circuit.
“These cars can sometimes be a surprise, and Zandvoort did not look like the car that finished with six podiums in a row, fighting for first and second on merit a few weeks ago,” said Toto post-race.
“You can’t really end up with a result like this without any major factor playing its part and that is something we need to analyse in the next few days.”
Friday was strong, and save for Lewis’ small error on the final run in Qualifying both cars would have been comfortably into Q3 and pushing for the top two rows on Saturday.
In the race, a slight delay in George’s first stop cost two places to Oscar Piastri in the McLaren and Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari.
Throw in some unexpectedly high tyre degradation turning a one-stop race into a two, and Sunday became a struggle.
F1 cars do not become bad overnight. We will analyse what happened with the full intention of bouncing back to fight at the front in Monza.