None of what happened during this first race after summer break was on anybody's bingo card. Zandvort tends to be one of those tracks that are iconic, but in terms of racing, it doesn't give us much. Since it's a shorter track, there are not many issues with the energy; the straight is quite short, and there is not much chance for drivers to overtake their adversaries. But this race was different and actually gave us quite a bit of material to work with.
Seeing Lando Norris winning tells us that McLaren is stepping up their game and the updates for their cars are actually working. There's still a long way to go, but we can't deny that there's a possibility for Lando to defend his title. He seems to be the one getting closer to making Mercedes scared. Although Hamilton is still above Lando in the championship standings, Ferrari doesn't seem to be improving as much as we hoped. For now, Kimi Antonelli continues to lead the championship, much to George Russell's dismay.
The thing that no one saw coming was Verstappen crashing on the second lap. It's definitely sad to see that he had to say goodbye to his home race like that, but at least he didn't hurt himself. His crash was a sight to behold, but the accident that made our heads turn was Bortoleto's 180-degree spin and Hulkenberg's reflexes that avoided a catastrophe. Maybe some of you are too young, but if you like motorsport, you probably saw the movie "Days of Thunder" starring a very young Tom Cruise. Anyway, in the movie, Cruise's character is in the middle of a race when one of the cars crashes, leaving smoke behind so the other cars can't see and end up crashing too. There goes Tom Cruise in his car. The camera angle and his maneuvers look like an EXACT COPY of Hulkenberg's wrist play when dodging his teammate.
We could keep talking about how Alonso ended up scoring points, and how the mechanics pulled the longest pit stops ever, and the amount of crazy penalties they decided to give away like candies, but Formula 1 is back for the rest of the year, and we have a lot to see yet. In the meantime, let's take a walk around this paddock where all the memes are waiting for you.