Formula 1 2026, Zandvoort: Preview

Metaphor-heavy reflections, supplemented by several indices previously unknown to mankind, in an attempt to explain the character of a circuit Formula 1 is visiting for the last time.

We first became properly acquainted with Zandvoort during the years of our particularly unhealthy fascination with the DTM. Since then, grey hair has thoroughly silvered the container housing our inexhaustible source of imagination, while former enthusiasm has been somewhat sanded down by the various protruding consequences of motorsport’s relentless commercialisation.

Now Formula 1 is coming here. Apparently for the last time.

And once the elderly King has packed his bags and left the North Sea coast, one particularly spectacular reminder of his stay will remain: the banked turns. Not merely corners - proper banked turns. We say “spectacular” without immediately reprimanding ourselves for excessive use of adjectives, as we usually would. There is a reason.

Zandvoort is 4,259 metres long, has fourteen corners, two banked turns at 19 and 18 degrees, a short lap, sand arriving from the North Sea and such a high concentration of tyre work that Pirelli classifies it among the circuits with high tyre-energy demands. The required downforce level is roughly comparable to Budapest.

And then there is the terrain.

Our Track Elevation Index still exists without anything resembling a properly finalised scale, and Zandvoort is a very good demonstration of why we should not hurry. The total difference between the highest and lowest points tells us surprisingly little. Far more important is where the car gains and loses potential energy.

On a descent, the basic operation is:

ΔEₚ = m·g·Δh.

Potential energy decreases and kinetic energy increases. The car borrows speed from the terrain. In an ideal schoolbook world, this is an interest-free loan: the next climb simply takes back exactly as much energy as the previous descent supplied. A racing car did not attend that particular school.

While it is enjoying its borrowed kilometres per hour, aerodynamic drag rises approximately with the square of speed, while the power required to overcome it rises approximately with the cube. Tyres deform, bearings resist, air gets heated.

Interest has accrued.

If the road rises again after the descent, part of the debt is repaid to the terrain in a perfectly civilised fashion. If a braking zone comes next, we have a default. The accumulated kinetic energy is dumped into brakes, tyres and airflow - and, in a 2026 Formula 1 car, partly returned to the energy-recovery system.

So if we ever want our future Track Elevation Index to mean anything, knowing the highest and lowest points will not be enough. At the very least, we need four things: the magnitude of longitudinal gradients, how frequently those gradients change, the vertical curvature of the road, and the position of every rise and fall relative to acceleration, cornering and braking.

That, admittedly, is for those of us who are hopelessly obsessed with things most people have no need to worry about. A normal reader is entirely free not to. Still, let us explain what we mean.

Zandvoort imposes its load through frequency.

The car is almost permanently entering or leaving some change in road profile. For the suspension this means continuously varying vertical load. For the floor it means continuously varying ride height. For the tyre it means another redistribution of normal force precisely when the same tyre is already being asked to generate lateral force.

And the current Formula 1 car still produces a significant share of its downforce through the floor. Vertical body movement is therefore no longer merely a question of how well the wheel follows the road. The flow beneath the floor changes, pressure fields move, and with them the aerodynamic balance.

The suspension is being asked to perform two jobs that do not particularly like one another. The wheel would prefer to follow the road freely. The body would prefer to behave as though the road had no profile at all. At Zandvoort, they argue about this several times per lap.

Turn 3, Hugenholtz, however, does not quite belong to our energy-credit system. Its banking does not put anything into the car’s energy wallet. It offers a subsidy.

On a flat road, practically all of the required centripetal force

F = m·v²/r

must be generated by the tyres and aerodynamics.

If the road surface is inclined by an angle θ, the normal reaction of the road gains a component pointing towards the centre of the turn. Even if we remove the tyres and aerodynamics from the problem entirely, the familiar expression remains:

v = √(r·g·tan θ).

At 18 degrees,

tan θ ≈ 0.325.

In other words, the geometry of the road alone can provide a centripetal-acceleration component of roughly 0.325g. Naturally, free lateral force has once again failed to materialise.

Higher speed increases aerodynamic load, but drag rises with it. Greater vertical tyre load increases available lateral force, but not linearly. Wheel camber relative to the road changes, the tyre carcass deforms, and temperature wanders around with its usual lack of respect for simple explanations.

What banking does provide is something increasingly rare on modern circuits: the racing line becomes simultaneously a choice of radius and a choice of force system.

The banking at Hugenholtz is progressive. Higher up the track, the radius is larger and the banking steeper. Lower down, the distance travelled is shorter, but more of the work must once again be done by the tyre.

Which means that asking “where is the correct racing line?” without specifying the car is almost meaningless. One car may benefit from climbing higher and buying speed with a longer route. Another may be able to lean harder on the front end lower down. A third may lose whatever it gained by the time it reaches corner exit.

This is where another one of our recently neglected toys becomes useful: the Aero Return Index. Its purpose is not to answer the simplistic question “how much downforce does this circuit require?”

It asks instead: how much lap time can be bought with one additional unit of downforce, and what is the drag cost of buying it?

At Zandvoort the conditions for a high return are obvious: plenty of medium- and high-speed corners, only one genuinely long straight, and a high overall downforce requirement. Pirelli compares the circuit’s aerodynamic demands with Budapest. In other words, an additional newton of downforce gets several opportunities to earn its keep before its associated drag finally submits the bill on the straight.

But there is a moneylender here as well.

The wind.

Zandvoort sits practically on the shore of the North Sea, and strong gusts are hardly unusual. Pirelli has specifically warned that under the new aerodynamic regulations their influence may become particularly noticeable.

Much like that ridiculous old aeroplane-on-a-treadmill problem, the car does not care primarily about its speed relative to the asphalt. It cares about its speed relative to the air:

V⃗air = V⃗car − V⃗wind.

From there comes dynamic pressure:

q = ½·ρ·V².

A ten-kilometre-per-hour gust sounds insignificant against a car travelling at two hundred. Until one remembers the square of velocity. A tailwind reduces both downforce and drag. A headwind increases both.

A crosswind introduces yaw into the incoming flow and makes the front wing, wheels, floor edges and diffuser operate under conditions quite different from those for which the car was balanced only moments earlier.

And at Zandvoort the wind works together with the terrain. The car emerges from the shelter of a dune, the airflow changes direction, the chassis simultaneously unloads over a vertical crest - and the aerodynamics and mechanics are given an excellent opportunity to start an argument while the driver is still in the middle of the corner.

The current forecast suggests heavy rain for Friday and Saturday, with air temperatures around 19–20°C. Sunday, for the moment, looks considerably drier. This is not merely an appendix to the race forecast.

Cooler air is denser, so at the same speed both downforce and drag increase. A colder track makes it harder to bring the tyres into their operating window. Rain washes away the accumulated layer of rubber, and once the circuit dries it effectively has to be rubbered in again.

Then add the sand blown in from nearby beaches, which, according to Pirelli, can change grip levels noticeably even between successive sessions. Initial conditions may therefore change faster than engineers can construct a neat curve describing track evolution.

And they have almost no time.

For the first (well, and last) time, the Dutch Grand Prix is being run as a Sprint weekend: one hour of practice on Friday, followed immediately by qualifying for the short race.

Sixty minutes to reconcile ride height with the terrain, understand the car in two banked turns, sort out the tyres and the wind, and then decide which of the things just observed actually came from the car and which arrived with the latest rain cloud from the North Sea.

And this is where another of our still unfinished indices becomes useful:

the Energy Index.

Zandvoort cannot be judged merely by how much electrical energy the car can recover over a lap. For a hybrid system, two things matter simultaneously: where energy can be collected, and where it is worth returning it to the wheels.

Circuits with frequent heavy braking zones are rich in regeneration opportunities. Zandvoort has relatively few of them. Much of the lap consists of corners in which speed is not destroyed in one major braking event but altered gradually.

So in its ability to “feed” the electrical side of the power unit, Zandvoort will probably rank below not only Montreal but Monza as well. That, we should stress, is something we have estimated rather than calculated, so there is no need to beat us too severely if reality disagrees.

There are, however, plenty of places to spend energy. After slower sections, the car has to accelerate several times into speed ranges where the electrical side of the power unit can make a substantial contribution alongside the internal-combustion engine.

So the energy problem may become asymmetric: you want to spend more often than the circuit allows you to earn efficiently.

And now our debt metaphor returns. The descent lent the car speed, while braking allowed part of the debt to be transferred into the battery. The next acceleration demanded it back.

If the system can close that loop efficiently, the capital is working. If energy has been stored somewhere it cannot be used profitably, we have another default - and all those carefully accumulated megajoules will buy you precisely nothing of practical value.

Zandvoort therefore makes a very good test for this whole collection of indices we have been inventing.

It is only a pity that by the time we finally turn the whole thing into something approaching a coherent system, Formula 1 will probably have forgotten that it once scattered its various aromas along this particular stretch of the North Sea coast.

At least there is little reason to mourn the Turbo Stress Index here. The circuit sits practically at sea level, and the cool air does not force the compressor to fight the thin atmosphere of high altitude. Perhaps the sand may contribute something unpleasant at the intake.

But otherwise the Aero Return should be high, the Energy Index uncertain, and our future Track Elevation Index finally gets a circuit on which we can test whether we have even defined its physical meaning correctly.

And over all of this sits the weather, capable within ten minutes of changing air density, tyre temperature, surface condition and the direction of the aerodynamic problem.

Zandvoort keeps changing the terms of the loan. Let’s see who remains solvent on Sunday.