Dutch GP Preview: Can Red Bull continue their unbeaten streak?

The Formula One World Championship finally returns after a month-long summer break to the small coastal town of Zandvoort in the Netherlands for world champion Max Verstappen's home race. Red Bull has been supreme on Sundays and remains unbeaten in the 2023 season, can anyone mount a challenge to the world champions in Zandvoort? If Hungary is anything to go by, McLaren and Mercedes will be tough competition to beat at the high-speed Dutch GP.

Before talking about track actions and predictions, classic Dutch weather seems to be threatening the circuit for the weekend in Zandvoort. Saturday is predicting a 56% chance of rain as qualifying begins and for Sunday there is a 17% chance of persistent rain throughout the day. Throwing a completely different perspective on results which will hopefully provide us with some fantastic on-track action on a challenging rain-soaked circuit.

With the start of qualifying being affected by rain, we could be seeing a repeat of the qualifying sessions in Britain and Belgium before the summer break. With the track starting dry and ending up wet and needing an inter or wet tyre or, vice-versa the track starting wet and drying up to move onto the slick tyres. McLaren’s strategy of adding more downforce to their cars for Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps proved an inspired decision as in the mixed slippery conditions it gave them a much more compliant, confident and quicker car and allowed drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri to achieve mega results for the Woking outfit. Furthermore, converting those starting positions into great race results come Sunday with Lando achieving a podium at Silverstone and Oscar having both of his top 3 starts at Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps.

The high-speed nature of the Zandvoort circuit also plays into McLarens hands, as well as Mercedes-Benz who will be strong this weekend on the back of their performances at the Hungaroring in Budapest, a very high-speed track which requires a fast direction change to produce a quick lap time and can be directly related to the Zandvoort circuit. In the rain however this season not only has the Red Bull shown its incredible amount of traction and overall level of grip, mainly in low-mid speed corners but, Max Verstappen in the rain is seemingly untouchable and shows us his incredible talent to find grip off-line and gain huge lap-time on those around him. Verstappen took victory in the rain-affected race in Monaco and in both Sprint Races he won in the wet, in Austria he impressively won by 21.048 over 24 laps and he beat out Oscar Piastri to win the other Sprint in Belgium. If the rain does fall in Zandvoort and with no major upsets or dramas, it would be hard to bet against Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing this weekend.

However if as expected the race on Sunday does stay dry and there is limited dry running in the Free Practice sessions throughout the weekend and with the Mercedes and McLaren being so quick in high-speed corners, I would strongly put them as favourites to challenge Red Bull and the Dutchman come race day. The track characteristics are so similar to Hungary and even if we go back to last year’s Dutch GP, Lewis Hamilton nearly won the Grand Prix on race pace alone thanks to the W13's impressive tyre saving allowing Hamilton to go for a one-stop strategy. However with a late race safety car and a strategic blunder from his team in not putting the 7 time world champion onto a set of new soft tyres under the Safety Car, he could have fought Max hard for the victory. I think it’ll be closer than people are expecting and there could be, like Hungary, another big upset on the cards come qualifying or on race day in Zandvoort.