Zandvoort wanted a fairytale ending. Instead it got a home hero in the barriers before the first lap was even done, and the world’s press spent the weekend writing the obituary for a circuit that deserved better than watching its biggest draw crash out in front of it.
Sunday’s race was billed as the last Dutch Grand Prix, full stop. No contract renewal, no last-minute reprieve, just a farewell tour that ended with Max Verstappen smashing his Red Bull into the wall at the final corner before most fans had even settled into their orange-clad seats. The explanation afterwards was typically matter-of-fact, but the damage to the script had already been done.
A Send-off Nobody Asked For
Before lights out, Verstappen stood in front of his own fans and asked them to help make the final Zandvoort race unforgettable. Careful what you wish for. Germany’s Bild pointed out the grim irony with relish, noting the race did indeed become unforgettable, just not for the reasons its home hero had in mind. Spain’s AS went further, describing a crash so heavy it “silenced Zandvoort” and abruptly ended the party atmosphere that had built up around Formula 1’s Dutch farewell.
The mechanics of the crash were simple enough. Verstappen ran wide at the final corner on a still-damp piece of track, the rear stepped out at well over 200 km/h, and the RB22 speared into the barrier before bouncing back across the circuit. He climbed out unhurt, radioed an apology to his team almost immediately, and that was that. One lap, zero points, a lifetime of Zandvoort memories reduced to a highlight reel of carbon fibre.
The Rest of the Grid Got Lucky
French outlet L’Équipe called it a “small miracle” that nobody collected the stricken Red Bull as it slid back across the racing line with a wheel hanging off. Liam Lawson was running right behind his former teammate when it happened, and several other cars had to thread through the wreckage. Pierre Gasly reportedly copped a shower of carbon fibre debris across the nose of his Alpine for his trouble. Given the speed and the state of the car afterwards, “miracle” doesn’t feel like tabloid exaggeration this time.
A four-time world champion doesn’t often make mistakes of this scale, and several outlets were quick to note that fact rather than let it slide as a routine racing incident. Wet patches at the final corner caught plenty of drivers out over the weekend, but only one of them had 105,000 home fans watching it happen live.
Even The Guardian Couldn’t Dress It Up
Britain’s The Guardian didn’t pretend this was some heroic send-off. Their verdict was blunt: no grand farewell for the local hero. The paper leaned instead on the safety angle, pointing out that a car left that mangled with a driver walking away unscathed says more about modern F1 engineering than anything else that happened on track. Small comfort for a man whose home finale ended before it had truly begun.
Marca, meanwhile, used the whole weekend as a chance to write Zandvoort’s send-off letter. The Spanish paper leaned into the romance of the place, a small seaside town transformed each August into an impossible-to-reach orange sea of humanity, and lamented that Formula 1’s endless hunt for new markets and glossier venues had claimed one of its most charming stops. Whether that’s sincere nostalgia or convenient copy for a slow news cycle is up for debate, but the sentiment was echoed almost everywhere.
Norris Gets the Victory Nobody in Orange Wanted
The cruel twist, as several papers noted, is that Zandvoort’s last winner was still driving an orange car. Just not the right one. Lando Norris took his McLaren to a papaya-coloured victory that The Guardian called a display of fighting spirit worthy of a world champion, closing out a genuinely chaotic Dutch Grand Prix that also saw Mercedes shuffle its podium order between Kimi Antonelli and George Russell. It’s a decent consolation prize for a circuit that just lost its championship slot, but it’s not the story anyone in the Netherlands wanted told.
The Eulogy Writes Itself
Every outlet from Bild to L’Équipe agrees on one thing: this was the end of an era, and a genuinely successful one at that. Since its 2021 return, Zandvoort delivered sold-out weekends, a raucous party atmosphere and, for the most part, actual competitive racing rather than the usual procession. That it’s now gone from the calendar says less about the venue and more about Formula 1’s restless appetite for new markets over loyal ones.
There’s something fitting, in a thoroughly unromantic way, about how it ended. Zandvoort’s entire modern identity was built around Verstappen mania, and its final chapter was written by his car in the barriers rather than on the podium. The dunes got their unforgettable send-off. It just wasn’t the one anybody printed on the ticket.
