McLaren’s Lando Norris delivered a statement win coming out of the summer break at the Dutch Grand Prix.

Norris didn’t just beat championship leader and home hero Max Verstappen to the finish line, he crushed the competition with a 22.896-second advantage Sunday.

Verstappen won from pole position in all three previous races held at the Zandvoort circuit as the Dutch Grand Prix had become his backyard playground since returning to the calendar in 2021.

Perhaps Saturday’s qualifying should have served as the harbinger that the winds of change were blowing on the track. As Verstappen sat on the provisional pole, Norris crossed the line .356 seconds faster to snatch P1 for the race.

Starting from pole position hasn’t been Norris’s forte. Sunday was the sixth time Norris was on pole and just like all the others, it was the sixth time he lost the lead on the opening lap.

Although Norris and Verstappen had identical reaction times once the lights went out, Norris experienced tire spin trying to get up to speed as Verstappen breezed down the inside of the front straightaway and into the first corner. We’ll give Norris a bit of a pass this time as almost every driver on his side of the grid — including McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri — lost track position out of the gate.

Norris made up for the poor start with pure race pace as Verstappen couldn’t build enough of a cushion to his lead. The McLaren closed within DRS range on the Red Bull as Norris zoomed by the once-unstoppable Verstappen on lap 18 of 72 and never looked back.

Just when you thought it was over, Norris also earned the fastest lap bonus point on the final lap of the race — proving that even with worn hard tires, the McLaren had more in store and put an exclamation mark on a smashing performance.

Norris’s margin of victory was the largest of the season, edging out Verstappen’s 22.4-second victory over his Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez at the season opener in Bahrain. Things sure have changed in five months since.

TITLE FIGHTS TIGHTEN UP

Even with Norris’s maximum-point effort though, he only trimmed eight points from Verstappen’s lead in the drivers’ championship.

While Verstappen isn’t in danger with a 70-point advantage, Red Bull’s hold on the constructors’ championship continues to crumble. McLaren has outscored Red Bull during the past six races with the gap down to 30 points.

Even with Piastri finishing fourth seen as a missed opportunity, he’s still doing better than the struggling Perez, whose sixth place was his best result since Miami in May but still isn’t good enough when his rivals continue to finish in the top five.

MERCEDES MISFIRE

Mercedes was flying high again heading into the summer break with three wins over the past four races, but the team was outmatched in Zandvoort.

Lewis Hamilton’s day was already derailed during qualifying as he failed to reach the final session to get into the top 10 and also received a three-place grid penalty for impeding Perez.

That forced Hamilton to start 14th although with teammate George Russell qualifying fourth, Mercedes was still in a position to compete for serious points.

A solid opening start on the faster soft tires allowed Hamilton to cut through the field, but that strategy required him to make an additional pit stop later in the race. Hamilton finished eighth — not bad all things considered — yet, he was only five seconds behind Russell for seventh. How did that happen?

Although Russell passed Piastri for P3 at the start, he couldn’t keep up with the mighty McLarens and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. Tire degradation was also an issue and Russell had to make an extra pit stop on lap 54 that cost him track position to Perez and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz.

“It felt that I was sliding around quite a lot, suffering from high degradation, and slowly went backwards,” Russell said in a team release. “We will have to understand why that was as we were relatively quick on Saturday. Performance does swing circuit to circuit, but we have been up near the front in the past six races. I am therefore confident that this is an outlier.”

It could be a blip for Mercedes following a fine return to top form, but we’ll learn soon enough with the Italian Grand Prix at Monza just around the corner this upcoming weekend.

PIT STOPS

• At least Leclerc partook in the champagne celebration this time. The stats may show the Ferrari driver has finished third in back-to-back races, however, Leclerc inherited that Belgian GP result when Russell was disqualified well after the podium party had commenced. Leclerc pulled off a perfect undercut, making his first pit stop ahead of Piastri and Russell, to take P3. Combined with teammate Sainz finishing fifth, it certainly bodes well for Ferrari with Monza up next on the schedule as they’ll want to perform well in front of their home fans.

• Alpine’s Pierre Gasly finally snagged sole possession of 14th in the standings. Gasly was tied with Ferrari reserve driver Oliver Bearman, who earned six points during his one-off appearance filling in for Sainz at the Saudi Arabia GP back in March. Gasly had a miserable three-race slump where he didn’t even start the British GP due to a gearbox problem, retired early from the Hungarian GP with a hydraulics failure and completed the Belgian GP but finished well out of the points in 13th. The French driver finished ninth Sunday to earn two precious points, putting Bearman (and hopefully his bad luck) in the rearview mirror.

• If you think that’s bad, remember Bearman is still ahead of six full-time drivers in the standings.

• We’ll wrap things up with the parade float that’ll surely haunt your dreams.