Errors from Max Verstappen hardly ever happen, which is why the mistake that sent the Red Bull Racing driver heavily into the wall on the opening lap of the Dutch GP stunned everyone. His immediate retirement also denied thousands of home supporters the chance to watch their hero in what will be his final home race before it disappears from the Formula 1 calendar, adding another layer of disappointment to the day. In truth, the entire Zandvoort weekend had already been frustrating for Verstappen. From FP1, it was clear that despite being in the mix in recent races, Red Bull only had the fourth-fastest car among the leading four teams, and there was little he could do to change that or challenge McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari. He did manage to pip Lewis Hamilton to P6 in qualifying for the sprint and then finished there as well, but in Saturday’s main qualifying session he could do no better than P7 — and he admitted that Sunday was unlikely to bring much improvement. Rain before the race may have given his fans a small spark of hope that some Verstappen brilliance could make the difference, but the shower passed and the circuit dried before the start, meaning everyone opted for slick tyres. Forced onto the grass on the run to Turn 1, he then had to defend from temporary team-mate Liam Lawson through the next sequence of corners.
It all unravelled in the middle of the banked final corner, which was still slightly damp, where he clipped the white line on the inside, lost the car and slammed hard into the outside wall.
Given the nature of that section of track, it looked very much like an IndyCar-style crash, and thankfully the drivers behind somehow avoided being collected. As Verstappen slid back across the circuit, Lawson went low and Pierre Gasly went high, both making the correct judgement, as did the others around them.
“I got caught out,” Verstappen said when asked by Road & Track about the incident. “It was still quite wet in that corner. And then, as soon as I saw the dry patch coming, I said now you can accelerate, but clearly that didn’t work. So probably was still a bit too early. It was a decent hit, but I’ve had worse...” Meanwhile, further back, Audi’s Gabriel Bortoleto spun as well and was also avoided by everyone. Had there been T-bone contact or a car launched into the air, the consequences could have been extremely serious — there is no doubt Formula 1 escaped lightly. That was the positive side of the story, but for Verstappen and his huge following, this was still a major disappointment, even if P7 had probably been the most realistic result available to him.
“Well, I think overall we had a disappointing weekend pace-wise,” he said. “We just couldn’t really fight with the guys ahead, so that’s probably the most disappointing part. But of course, I wish that I could have done a little bit more in the race. But looking at the pace that we are showing, I don’t think it was really possible anyway. But yeah, I still would like to race, still would like to have tried and done a good job. Hopefully in Monza we can be a little bit more competitive.”
He also admitted that he had not been feeling at his best over the course of the weekend.
“Yeah, it’s just not been feeling well,” he said. “So we’re just looking forward to a week break where I can just recover also because I really didn’t feel good. So yeah, I wish for more, but you need to be realistic this season. We are the fourth fastest team, so it’s not like rocking up to Zandvoort suddenly, we can do some magic things. It’s just how it is. Other teams have brought upgrades we haven’t. When you’re already on the back foot, it’s even more on the back foot. So it’s nothing surprising. It’s just the reality that we live in.”
This has not been a strong season for Red Bull, but Zandvoort marked a particularly low moment after recent podium finishes had suggested the team was beginning to make progress with the troublesome RB22.
Having only recently persuaded his star driver to commit for another four years, team principal Laurent Mekies did not try to hide from the pace deficit, admitting that the RB22 has fallen behind its main rivals.
“Difficult weekend here in Zandvoort,” said the Red Bull boss. “First of all, the most important thing is that Max is okay. It was a pretty big shunt, and we are all glad to see that he’s out of the car unharmed, and that’s what matters the most today. Performance-wise, I think there is nowhere to hide. It was a very difficult weekend. It seems like we have made a bit of a step back compared to where we were before the summer break. Of course, we’ll never know what the real pace of the car in the race will have been with Max. But it’s fair to say that session after session, it looked more difficult than it was in Budapest or in Spa or in Austria.”
On the positive side, stand-in driver Liam Lawson delivered everything that could reasonably have been expected. After battling Verstappen on the opening lap and avoiding the accident, the Kiwi brought the car home in a solid P7, earning useful points for both the team and himself.
“Liam has done a good job stepping into the car,” said Mekies. “It’s never easy to step into a different team, a different car, for a race like that. And he’s done a good job, only one-tenth away from Max yesterday in qualifying, and today took the points that were available to him pace-wise with the seventh place.”
Mekies now has to try and generate the kind of momentum that helped the team make major gains in the second half of 2026, although that will not be straightforward given where things currently stand:
“Some tough work for us to do to regroup, and to see if it is simply the competition that has done a better job than us at upgrading the car, or if something has been limiting us more than it should have been here in Zandvoort. So that will be for us the next two weeks, before we fight back into Monza all together.”
