Ask the drivers of the three quickest cars at Zandvoort what is wrong with them and you get three unrelated answers. Only one of the three thinks his team can do anything about it before the race.
Start with the pole-sitter, who sounded the gloomiest of the lot. Lando Norris ran second early in Saturday's sprint, then watched the rear of the McLaren fall away until Charles Leclerc took him into Turn 1 on lap 18.
"Just don't have the pace in general, especially the slow-speed corners," Norris said. "We just struggle so much compared to the others. We saw that the whole weekend so far. There's nothing we can do. The car's very good in high speed, and it's just nowhere near good enough in slow-speed."
McLaren arrived at Zandvoort with new parts for the MCL40, following its first win of the season in Hungary. Norris refused to blame them.
"No - they've done exactly as they should, so I'm very happy," he said. "We still managed to progress, it's just certain areas we're just nowhere near quick enough. In the slow speed, we've just struggled the whole weekend and it seems clearly the weakness we have in the car at the minute. I feel if we still went back to Monaco now, we're just going to be as shocking as we were."
That reframes the Hungary result rather than building on it. By Norris's own account the win came because the Hungaroring flattered McLaren's one strength, not because the car has become complete.
"We've clearly progressed a lot, especially in medium and high speed, which is where we're quick here, why we were so quick in Budapest [...] The slow speed, we were still slower than Ferrari and matching Mercedes just about. So, we still have weaknesses, even though we managed to win one race, it's just the strengths really shone there."
Ferrari's problem is the mirror image. Leclerc took second in the sprint, then found himself sixth on the grid after Lewis Hamilton's late lap moved the Briton up to fifth. Four-tenths off Norris's pole, 1.3s off Russell across the sprint - and Leclerc still insisted pole was never realistically available.
"I don't think it's down to changes in the car," he said. "Speaking a little bit with Lando and George, I felt like yesterday they didn't do everything perfect, or the car didn't feel quite right, whereas for me, the car felt quite good yesterday. So I knew maybe we had a bit less margin compared to them. And then today we made some mistakes in changing modes, power modes from Q2 to Q3 [...] But I don't think the potential for pole position was there anyway."
Norris describes a deficit he expects engineering to eventually solve. Leclerc describes a trait he has made peace with - one he actively prefers.
"There's definitely a tendency where we seem to be faster in the race than we are in qualifying," he said. "It's we're trying to make the car as fast as possible, but for the characteristics we have, it works a little bit better in the race than in qualifying. I prefer that way than the other way, but on a track like this, it doesn't help."
Red Bull's situation is the bleakest, because Max Verstappen has no diagnosis at all. Seventh on the grid at his home race is the worst qualifying result of his Dutch Grand Prix career, one spot ahead of stand-in team-mate Liam Lawson, and it came after the team overhauled the RB22 between sessions.
"We changed quite a bit and it didn't make a difference," Verstappen told Sky Sports F1. "The balance was pretty much the same as what I had all weekend so it didn't really allow me to push or feel comfortable with the car. So that's then the position you're in."
On what could be done overnight, he offered nothing: "I don't know. Difficult to say at the moment when you are just lacking pace. Just need to try and do our own race and see if it's positive or not." He anticipates running "completely alone" on Sunday.
There is a further complication that GPblog's Ben Hunt reported - Verstappen has been ill with flu since arriving on Thursday, and has characterised Red Bull's difficulties as "fundamental problems" rather than a missed setup window. The driver himself declined to treat it as a crisis.
"It's not frustrating. I mean, we've been in that situation basically the whole year, you know? It's not something that has just popped up."
Norris at least kept his sense of humour, saying he would rather be "fighting for top spot [...] rather than trying to survive in every slow-speed corner and fighting for my life." He leads the field away regardless. Given his own description of the car, the Zandvoort chicane is where Sunday gets decided.