Winners and losers from F1's 2025 Dutch Grand Prix

A combative, contact-inducing Dutch Grand Prix provided plenty of drama at Zandvoort.

Whether it was the battle for the lead and the championship, the midfield or even further back, there was drama to be had everywhere.

Here are our winners and losers from the race.

Loser - Lando Norris (DNF)

Norris is an obvious loser in the sense his car broke down and that meant he left Zandvoort 34 points behind Piastri instead of 16, but although the mechanical failure will naturally be the focus here, there is also the looming sense of a shift in momentum within the McLaren team.

That’s four races in a row now where Piastri has been the stronger McLaren driver, and but for a couple of marginal calls - the safety car penalty at Silverstone and the strategy curveball in Hungary - he could easily have won the past four races consecutively.

The margins are still very fine, of course, but Norris should be more concerned about the balance of power Piastri holds in pure performance terms right now than by the misfortune he suffered here. - Ben Anderson

More from Zandvoort

‘Complete joke’ - Sainz’s penalty rage and our verdict
How Norris is dealing with major F1 title setback
Has Norris's failure decided the 2025 F1 title fight? Our verdict
Dramatic DNF for Norris as Piastri wins Dutch GP

Winner - Isack Hadjar (3rd)

An obvious choice, given he qualified fourth and finished on the podium in a midfield car, albeit a very drivable and user-friendly one.

Hadjar went into the summer break as F1 2025’s most outstanding rookie, and he’s resumed with his best result yet in F1 and Racing Bulls’ best result since Pierre Gasly finished third in the 2021 Azerbaijan GP for the team in its AlphaTauri guise.

Given Yuki Tsunoda’s ongoing bafflement at struggling so much in the second Red Bull, at this rate surely that seat becomes Hadjar’s at the end of this season. - BA

Losers - Liam Lawson (12th) and Carlos Sainz (13th)

The pain here was greater for Carlos Sainz given the obvious injustice of the penalty he received.

But given where this clash consigned both him and Liam Lawson to in the results, the stewards' involvement ended up just being dour icing on an already rubbish cake for the Williams driver and no consolation for Lawson as both watched their respective team-mates star. - Matt Beer

Winner - Oscar Piastri (1st)

Oscar Piastri must be an F1 team principal's dream.

Can he be the outright fastest driver in F1? I don't think we'll find that out this season, what with the mano-e-mano nature of this all-McLaren title fight.

Can he be the most dependable driver in F1? It will 'depend' on your definition, but that answer seems a clear-as-day yes. 

The way 2025 has played out, there was little doubt that Piastri would somehow manoeuvre himself into a pole shot despite trailing Norris all weekend before that. There was less doubt still that, on each of the three safety car restarts that could've flustered a nervier driver, he would hold firm and keep track position.

The guy is made of very, very stern stuff. He's the perfect driver for this dominant McLaren. - Valentin Khorounzhiy

Loser - Ferrari

Ferrari's weekend promised absolutely nothing on Friday, yet the way it played out in the end will somehow still be a total gut punch - glimpses of hope turned into zero on the scoreboard, Ferrari's first since Canada last year.

Hamilton's DNF is a whole thing unto itself, but how about that Leclerc exit - a predicament made possible first by him getting unlucky with the timing of the first safety car, then pitting to cover off a Kimi Antonelli charge on softs.

Ferrari strategists will know what they saw, but at a cursory glance Leclerc's questioning of the pitstop in the immediate aftermath seems valid - it put him right within striking range of Antonelli, and Antonelli struck. - VK

Loser - Lewis Hamilton (DNF)

But let's talk Hamilton specifically some more. This had all the makings of an encouraging post-summer break bounceback for Hamilton - who clearly had the upper hand on Leclerc through practice and only lost out by small margins in Q3.

The Hugenholtz crash, a consequence of a "twitchy rear" and running out of track, overshadowed that. It should be an easy one to forget because the points Hamilton was going to score today don't really matter for his career and Ferrari, sorry, isn't really fighting for anything important this year, unless you're really invested in that constructors' battle for second place.

But the feeling is still that things just aren't coming together, that Hamilton - while not slow - isn't at his fastest when it really matters, isn't totally comfortable, isn't capitalising on situations the way he used to in his best years. - VK

Winner - Ollie Bearman (6th)

This was looking like a very 'Bearman 2025' weekend - clearly very fast relative to his team-mate except in the moment where it mattered the most, Q1, which should've consigned him to a race of anonimity from a pitlane start.

It's the kind of race that can make people think he's been a letdown this season - those people are wrong, but the fact his pace hasn't really translated into appropriate results is a very fair criticism.

He was clearly very fortunate here with various safety car timings, particularly with Lance Stroll and Esteban Ocon - two cars running ahead of him at that time - pitting right at the exact moment Kimi Antonelli clattered into Charles Leclerc to bring out a safety car, which meant Bearman got to leapfrog both.

But he looked lively throughout the day, had done a great job to put himself into that position after the aforementioned pitlane start, then executed wonderfully on fresh tyres in the closing laps, pouncing on Gabriel Bortoleto, Fernando Alonso and Pierre Gasly. It's what Haas needed to see - the execution to go with the obvious pace. - VK

Winner - Alex Albon (5th)

What a turnaround from what seemed like the 37th variant of a "why do we do this to ourselves?" radio rant at Williams as Alex Albon exited Zandvoort Q2 in a painful 15th place amid tyre warm-up and traffic woes.

Albon immediately undid all the damage of qualifying with an excellent 'aim to the outside everywhere' approach to the first lap then immediately got him into the top 10. From there, he was simply fast and sensible as so many rivals' races fell apart.

It's actually his fourth fifth place of 2025 - but his first since Imola in May, which says everything about how his season has stumbled until this brilliant afternoon. - MB

Loser - Kimi Antonelli (16th)

This should've been the breakthrough race Kimi Antonelli needed as he put another disappointing (but better than it looked considering how practice had gone) qualifying behind him to get into a position where Mercedes needed to get team-mate George Russell (and his admittedly slightly damaged car) out of its flying rookie's way.

That meant Russell's eventual fourth should've been Antonelli's for the taking, but for his clumsy wander into Leclerc's Ferrari. Though perhaps Leclerc's generous tone over the incident is - like Verstappen's reaction to being taken out by Antonelli in Austria - a sign that his peers feel Antonelli's having a better season than many outsiders are declaring. - MB

Winner - Lance Stroll (7th)

Two costly shunts - first in FP2 on Friday and then again on his first lap of qualifying - looked set to completely ruin Stroll’s weekend, so the fact he recovered to score points from the back row of the grid has to go down as a success.

Obviously there was an element of good fortune at play - how could there not be in such a chaotic race where pitstop timings dictated track position within the tighter margins of the midfield?

No doubt also Stroll isn’t making as much of the improved Aston Martin as Fernando Alonso is in terms of outright performance, but there was also some robust driving from Stroll in this race and he avoided making the big errors that took out so many of the cars around him.

That’s also now three points finishes from the past four races, putting him back ahead of Alonso in the drivers’ championship. - BA

Loser - Alpine and Sauber

The day's two other non-scorers - along with Ferrari - probably got closer to points than they would've expected coming into the day. The C45 wasn't a great car here, the more or less abandoned A525 isn't a great car anywhere.

But there was a lot of higher-level attrition and a lot of chaos, and ultimately both will feel the tinge of an opportunity missed and the string of rivals' huge results in the constructors' standings.

There's one silver lining for Alpine at least - Franco Colapinto looked up to par here, not too far back from Pierre Gasly in qualifying and at the level in the race, to come within half a tenth of points, which shouldn't go unnoticed. - VK