Zandvoort gears up for its last Formula 1 Grand Prix

Formula 1 is set to stage its final Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort on Sunday afternoon, ending a six-year run, as rising costs pushed the organisers to end it.

Reigning world champion Lando Norris will start first on the grid. Max Verstappen, racing at home for the final time and out of this year’s title fight, will start seventh.

George Russell won Saturday’s sprint race with Verstappen sixth, the Dutchman then qualified only seventh, blaming “fundamental problems” with his car. He has also been fighting a cold. It rained on Sunday morning but the tracks are expected to be dry for the race.

Verstappen won the first three races after Formula 1 returned to Zandvoort, in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Norris won in 2024 and Oscar Piastri last year.

Why it is ending
When the organisers announced it would be ending in December 2024, they said they wanted to finish while the event was still at its peak rather than gamble on rising costs.

“There were various options on the table to continue,” said Robert van Overdijk, the director of Circuit Zandvoort. “We could have rotated with other circuits, there were opportunities to carry on every year as well. In the end it is our decision.”

Zandvoort and the British Grand Prix at Silverstone are the only races on the calendar that run without government financial support, while circuits in Qatar and Saudi Arabia pay hundreds of millions to host a race.

The Dutch event is financed privately by a group of family firms, and the AD newspaper has put the cost of staging it at close to €80 million.

The drivers’ regret
Lando Norris said he was sorry to see the race go, telling broadcaster NOS he preferred compact circuits like Zandvoort and that dropping it had not been the drivers’ choice.

Sporting director Jan Lammers wrote an open letter to fans saying that a small country had brought one of the world’s biggest sporting events back “to a place where many thought it impossible”, and said almost two million spectators had passed through the gates since the return.

A six-year run
The race returned in 2021 after a 36-year absence, the previous Dutch Grand Prix having been won by Niki Lauda in 1985. Its revival was driven by Prince Bernhard, a cousin of the king, who bought the circuit a decade ago to bring Formula 1 back to the Netherlands.

Bernhard sold his stake in the track earlier this year. Since the return, the event has drawn around 100,000 fans a day, most of them dressed in orange for Verstappen, and turned the 4.3km dune circuit into one of the season’s set-piece weekends.

The circuit itself is not closing. It will keep hosting other racing and has said it will bring the all-electric Formula E series to Zandvoort from 2027.