By Alan Baldwin
ZANDVOORT, Netherlands, Aug 22 (Reuters) – George Russell took a morale-boosting Dutch Grand Prix sprint race win from pole position on Saturday while Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli extended his Formula One championship lead over Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton to 53 points.
Refreshed and back with a bang after the August break, Russell led every lap and took the chequered flag 1.360 seconds ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc with McLaren’s reigning champion Lando Norris in third place and Antonelli fourth as the rain came down just as the otherwise dry race was finishing.
Hamilton, Antonelli’s closest title rival after 11 grands prix and five sprint races, finished seventh behind McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in fifth and sixth. Alpine’s Pierre Gasly took the final point in eighth.
Antonelli has 224 points to Hamilton’s 171 and Russell’s 168, with the big points still to come in Sunday’s sold-out grand prix, the seaside circuit’s last appearance on the F1 calendar for the foreseeable future.
“A great start to the weekend. If there was one more lap it would have potentially been a very different end to the race, so I was glad the rain came when it did,” said Russell, who made a clean getaway and never looked threatened over the 24 laps of a race short on thrills.
“I knew if there were going to be any overtakes, they were going to be towards the end of the race. So, I knew I just wanted to manage my tyres a bit through the high-speed corners and have a bit more in the tank come the end of the race.”
It was Russell’s third sprint victory of the season.
NORRIS PASSED BY LECLERC
Norris, starting on the front row, slotted into second at the start but was passed by Leclerc — despite the Ferrari being on less durable soft tyres to rivals on mediums — down the inside into the first corner on lap 18.
While Leclerc set off in pursuit of Russell, Norris had to fend off Antonelli who had passed Piastri at the start to go from fifth to fourth.
“It would have been nice to have been a little bit faster today, but Charles was just too quick,” said Norris. “I don’t think it was the tyres, just that we lacked pace. We’re not quick enough and we have some work to do.
“We’re very good in high-speed, the cars just not performing to the level it needs to in the slow-speed corners. There’s not a lot we can do. I think we’re optimising a lot of things.”
Qualifying for Sunday’s race will follow later on Saturday.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Ed Osmond)
