Leclerc Praises Brilliant F1 Dutch GP Fan Culture
The Orange Army and the Spirit of Zandvoort: What Charles Leclerc Saw at the Dutch Grand Prix
In modern Formula 1, there are races you watch for the racing, and races you watch for the feeling they create. The Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort belongs firmly in the second category.
When Charles Leclerc was asked in late August 2025 by Scuderia Ferrari to describe what comes to mind when he thinks of Zandvoort, his answer was immediate and unscripted in tone.
“When I think about the Dutch Grand Prix, the first thing that comes to my mind is the Orange Army. It’s really nice to see so much passion and, to be completely honest, there’s always so much respect also for all the teams and all the drivers. And I think that’s what we all enjoy at the Dutch Grand Prix, mostly because there’s respect as well.”
It is a short statement, less than forty words, but it captures something that timing sheets and television ratings cannot. In a sport now spread across five continents and twenty-four races, Zandvoort has managed to create an atmosphere that drivers remember first, before they talk about corners, setup, or strategy.
Leclerc, a Ferrari driver who has known the deafening roar of Monza and the intensity of Monaco, chose to talk not about the track, but about the people in the stands.
Why that matters, and why a rival driver would praise another driver’s home crowd for its respect, says a lot about where Formula 1 is today.
Zandvoort: A Circuit Shaped by the Dunes
To understand the Orange Army, you have to understand the place it calls home.
Circuit Zandvoort was never supposed to be a permanent fixture. It was born from improvisation in the late 1940s, when the town of Zandvoort, a seaside resort on the North Sea coast west of Amsterdam, used its wartime access roads and dunes to lay out a racing circuit. The first official Formula 1 World Championship race there came in 1952, and for the next three decades it became a classic European stop.
Max Verstappen on Final Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort in F1
It was a drivers’ track in the old sense. Narrow, fast, with blind crests and camber changes that punished the smallest mistake. It wound through the dunes, so the sand itself was a hazard. Wind would blow grit onto the racing line. Legends won there – Ascari, Clark, Stewart, Lauda – and tragedies happened there too. By 1985, the year of the last race before its long hiatus, Formula 1 had outgrown it.
The paddock was too small, the run-off was insufficient, and the commercial demands of the sport were moving elsewhere.
For 36 years, Zandvoort lived on as a national circuit, hosting DTM, F3 and club events, but not Formula 1.
Its return was not inevitable. It took two things to happen at once: a massive private investment to modernize the circuit without destroying its character, and a reason for 100,000 Dutch fans to want to be there every day.
The modernization, led by the circuit owners and designer Jarno Zaffelli, kept the essential layout – the sweeping Hugenholtzbocht, the fast Scheivlak – but added two signature banked corners. Turn 3, now 19 degrees of banking, and the final corner, Arie Luyendykbocht at 18 degrees, were steeper than Indianapolis.
They allowed multiple racing lines and kept speed up, but more importantly they created natural amphitheatres. Fans in those banked grandstands can see almost half the lap.
The reason to fill those grandstands was already racing in Formula 1.
The Rise That Created a Movement
Dutch presence in Formula 1 before Max Verstappen was sporadic. There were talented drivers – Jan Lammers, Jos Verstappen, Christijan Albers – but the country had never had a sustained front-runner, let alone a World Champion. Motorsport was a niche interest compared to football and cycling.
Verstappen changed that equation completely. His debut with Toro Rosso at 17 in 2015, his immediate promotion to Red Bull and win on debut in Spain in 2016, and his relentless progression into a generational talent created a national sporting story that had not existed before.
The Orange Army did not start at Zandvoort. It started on the road. In 2016, Red Bull and Verstappen’s management began organizing a dedicated grandstand at the Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring, a short drive from the Netherlands. A few thousand fans in orange shirts. The next year it was five thousand.
Then they appeared at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, considered a second home race, and at the Hungaroring. Travel agencies built entire packages around it – buses, flights, campsites, all in orange.
Sergio Perez Reflects on Red Bull Career & Cadillac F1 Move
The colour itself matters. Orange is not just a sporting colour in the Netherlands; it is a national identifier, linked to the House of Orange-Nassau. When the national football team plays, the country turns orange. Verstappen’s supporters simply transferred that existing cultural code to Formula 1. It required no explanation to anyone Dutch.
When Zandvoort was announced to return in 2020 – ultimately delayed to 2021 by the COVID-19 pandemic – the demand was unprecedented. The organizers sold out for three years in advance within hours. In 2021, despite capacity limits, the scenes were extraordinary: a sea of orange smoke, flags, and constant chanting that could be heard on the onboard radios.
The event became less a Grand Prix and more a national festival that happened to have a Formula 1 race at its center.
By 2023, 2024 and 2025, the Dutch Grand Prix was established as one of the most visually and acoustically distinctive races on the calendar, even as its long-term contract came under discussion due to calendar pressure and financial constraints.
The discussion itself – whether Zandvoort could keep its place in an increasingly global and lucrative calendar – only added to the emotional weight of each edition.
Dissecting Leclerc’s Observation
For Charles Leclerc to call out the Orange Army as his first association with Zandvoort is significant because of who he is.
Leclerc has driven for Ferrari since 2019. He knows what partisan support looks like. Every September at Monza, he is embraced by the Tifosi, Ferrari’s own red army, whose passion can be overwhelming in both victory and defeat. He has also been on the other side of hostile crowds.
He has been booed at some venues when he has battled a home favourite. He has spoken publicly in the past about how uncomfortable it is when fans cheer a crash or boo a driver on the podium.
So when he deliberately adds the qualifier – “there’s always so much respect also for all the teams and all the drivers” – he is making a comparative judgment based on experience. He is saying that Zandvoort is loud without being intimidating, passionate without being toxic.
That distinction is not trivial for drivers. At 300 km/h, the crowd is a blur, but the atmosphere seeps into the whole weekend. The walk from the motorhome to the garage, the drivers’ parade, the cooldown room. A crowd that only supports one man and is hostile to the other nineteen creates a tense, draining environment.
Andrea Stella & Zak Brown Address McLaren F1 2026 Resurgence
A crowd that supports one man intensely but still applauds a good lap from a Ferrari or a Mercedes changes the psychological dynamic. It allows drivers to feed off the energy rather than brace against it.
Leclerc’s phrasing is also notable for its order. He starts with passion, acknowledges it positively, then immediately pivots to respect as the more important quality. “That’s what we all enjoy at the Dutch Grand Prix, mostly because there’s respect as well.”
For a group of twenty elite athletes who spend 200 days a year competing against each other, respect is not a platitude. It is the condition that makes intense competition sustainable.
The Fine Line of Modern Fandom
Formula 1’s recent boom has created new fan cultures everywhere, and with them, new problems. The sport’s ownership has done an exceptional job of growing its audience, particularly among younger fans and in the United States, but growth brings friction.
The last few seasons have seen debates about fan behaviour that never existed before. The use of flares, popularized in part by the Dutch grandstands, has been criticized for reducing visibility and triggering safety concerns.
Coordinated booing campaigns against drivers after controversial races have led drivers like Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton and Leclerc himself to publicly call for calm. Social media amplifies the worst moments.
Zandvoort has not been immune to this. There have been isolated incidents of flares on track and of overzealous behaviour in campsites. But the broader pattern, as noted by race promoters, the FIA and drivers across teams, is that the Dutch crowd self-polices effectively.
The grandstands are family-heavy. The organization is meticulous. The message from Verstappen himself has consistently been to support him but respect everyone. That message carries weight.
Leclerc’s comment in August 2025 came at a time when this debate was still live. By singling out Zandvoort for its respect, he was reinforcing a standard. He was telling fans, indirectly, that this is what drivers value and remember.
A Comparative View: Tifosi, Orange Army, and Everyone Else
Every major fan culture in Formula 1 has its own character.
The Tifosi at Monza and Imola are historic, emotional, and deeply tied to Ferrari as an institution rather than a single driver. Their love is conditional on the team’s performance in a way that can feel almost spiritual. When Ferrari wins at Monza, the invasion of the track and the crowd under the podium is a ritual.
The British crowd at Silverstone is vast, knowledgeable, and increasingly diverse, supporting multiple British drivers across teams. The atmosphere is more festival-like, less colour-coordinated.
The Orange Army is different again. It is mobile, organized, and visually unified to an extent no other fanbase matches. At any European race, you can see them. At Zandvoort, that visual unity becomes total. From a helicopter shot, the circuit looks orange.
The sound is continuous, because the track is short – 4.259 km – and the grandstands are close. The banking acts like a sound shell.
What Leclerc identifies is that this overwhelming numerical and visual dominance has not turned into exclusion. You can wear red at Zandvoort and still enjoy the weekend. You can wear silver or papaya.
Mercedes Skips F1 Macarena Wing: Toto Wolff Explains Strategy
You will be in the minority, but you will not feel unsafe. That is not true at every sporting event in the world, and it is a credit to the organizers and the core of the fanbase.
Why It Matters for Formula 1’s Future
Formula 1 is in a period of calendar negotiation that will define its next decade. There are more countries that want a race than there are dates available. Historic European venues like Zandvoort, Spa, and Monza face annual pressure to justify their place against well-funded bids from new markets.
In that context, atmosphere is not just a nice-to-have; it is a commercial and sporting asset. Television directors love Zandvoort because every shot looks alive. Drivers love it because it feels like an event. Sponsors love it because the images of orange grandstands are instantly recognizable.
But more importantly, Formula 1 wants to replicate the Dutch model without replicating its problems. The sport wants passionate, travelling, spending, content-creating fans in every market. It wants national identification, because that drives year-round engagement. What it does not want is tribalism that turns toxic.
The Dutch Grand Prix offers a case study that intense national pride and sporting hospitality can coexist. It shows that a fan culture built around a single dominant figure does not have to become hostile to everyone else.
The conditions that created it – a homegrown superstar, a historic track reborn, a pre-existing national colour, and careful organization – cannot be copied exactly, but the principle of mutual respect can be encouraged everywhere.
Verstappen himself has often seemed ambivalent about the scale of adoration. He has said that while the support gives him energy, it also creates immense pressure, because the entire grandstand expects him to win at home. That pressure makes the respect he and his fans show to others even more important; it signals confidence rather than insecurity.
Conclusion: Passion Needs a Container
Charles Leclerc’s short video ahead of the 2025 Dutch Grand Prix will not be remembered as a major policy statement. It was not meant to be. It was a media day answer, produced by his team.
Yet it endures because it was precise. He did not say the Dutch Grand Prix is loud. Everyone knows that. He said it is passionate and respectful, and that the second quality is why the first is enjoyable.
In a sport that is constantly measuring – lap times, tyre degradation, downforce levels, budget caps – some of the most important things are qualitative. The feeling of being welcomed, even as a rival, in a stadium built for someone else. The ability of 100,000 people to make a driver feel energized rather than attacked.
The Orange Army began as a travel package for a promising teenager. It has become one of the defining sights of modern Formula 1, and a standard against which other crowds are judged. If Zandvoort’s future on the calendar remains uncertain beyond the current contracts, its contribution to the culture of the sport is already secure.
George Russell Engaged: Oval Yellow Diamond Ring Revealed
It proved that modern Formula 1 can still produce an old-fashioned, community-driven atmosphere, and that such an atmosphere can be both fiercely loyal and fundamentally respectful.
Leclerc, as a competitor who has to beat Max Verstappen and the roar that comes with him, understood that better than anyone.
For more F1 News
Follow us
Never Miss an F1 Update!
Join the AutodromeF1 Formula 1 community for real-time race commentary, paddock news, and 2026 calendar updates across your favorite platforms: