George Russell secures Dutch GP Sprint victory, narrowing championship gap against Lewis Q
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Saturday 22 August 2026 11:52, UK George Russell won the Dutch Grand Prix Sprint to maintain his perfect start to Formula 1's return to action and trim his championship deficit to Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli.
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NDTV SportsGeorge Russell Roars To Sprint Pole At Dutch GP, Championship Leader Kimi Antonelli P5 George Russell celebrates after his Dutch GP sprint pole
BBC SportPublished Mercedes' George Russell led from start to finish to win the sprint race at the Dutch Grand Prix.
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Russell edged out Norris by four hundredths of a second, with Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and the other McLaren of Oscar Piastri also finishing within a tenth of the Brit's leading time.
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BBC SportFerrari's Charles Leclerc passed McLaren's Lando Norris with six laps to go to take second ahead of the world champion, who fended off a late attack from Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli.
The Guardian Sport1 George Russell 🇬🇧 Mercedes 1min 11.567sec 2 Lando Norris 🇬🇧 McLaren 1:11.608 3 Charles Leclerc 🇲🇨 Ferrari 1:11.622
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But Norris was at least able to hold off Antonelli for third, the championship leader having taken fourth from the other McLaren of Oscar Piastri on the first lap.
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BBC SportNorris now had to concentrate on holding off Antonelli. The Italian was 0.3secs behind the McLaren crossing the line into the last lap, but although he feinted a move into Tarzan, he was not close enough to make it work.
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While Russell is now 56 points back on his team-mate after victory, Antonelli's overall championship lead has extended to 53 points after Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton finished where he qualified in seventh.
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BBC SportRussell's win cuts his deficit in the championship to Antonelli to 56 points, with Lewis Hamilton in second place.
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A downpour arrived just as Russell was taking the chequered flag for his third Sprint win of the season with the Mercedes driver admitting the final tour would have been "very sketchy" had the rain arrived any earlier.
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BBC SportRussell's only concern was the weather. Rain was forecast to fall two laps from the end. As it happened, it did not come until after the chequered flag, as the drivers completed their slowing down laps, but it was heavy enough that it would have made the end of the race eventful had it come sooner.
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Saturday August 22 1.30pm: F1 Academy Race 1 2.15pm: Dutch GP Qualifying build-up3pm: DUTCH GP QUALIFYING
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Russell appeared to run out of ideas as the summer break approached, with the 28-year-old publicly flip-flopping on whether his driving style was the reason he was struggling to match Antonelli, who is competing in just his second F1 season and only turns 20 two days after Sunday's race.
3 details only one outlet reported
Independent claims that didn't surface elsewhere in our corpus. Treat as supplementary — not corroborated across outlets.
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01 Sky Sports Hamilton, though, was 1.6s back on Verstappen in seventh and will now hope for sufficiently better over the rest of race weekend after being unhappy with his set-up into Sprint Qualifying.
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02 The Guardian Sport “And now excuse me while I interrupt myself.” Every summer, the F1 season channels the late Murray Walker, taking a month off, and every summer we do excuse it, and welcome it back. Here we go for the last 11 or 12 race weekends of the season.
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03 BBC Sport Russell led a train of four cars for the entirety of the race but was always able to keep his pursuers at arm's length.
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Sources (4)
- guardian-sport
- bbc-sport
- skysports
- ndtv-sports