Two drivers will start the Dutch Grand Prix in cars they did not expect to be sitting in a week ago, and the cause is mundane: Isack Hadjar hurt his wrist while training over the shutdown.
The knock-on ran downhill fast. Hadjar out of the Red Bull, Liam Lawson up from Racing Bulls to fill it, and reserve driver Yuki Tsunoda called off a Greek holiday to take the vacated Racing Bulls seat alongside rookie Arvid Lindblad.
Tsunoda's version of events involves sand.
"I was with my manager and also other friends in Greece, spending [time] together. I was on the beach," he said at Zandvoort. "I just suddenly got a call, 'OK, you have to go to the UK.' OK, I was in Greece [for] just 24 hours and you already want me to go to the UK? I said, 'Why?' - 'Maybe you might race this week.' OK, that's where I'm going [then]!"
It will be his 90th start for the team he made his F1 debut with in 2021, and his first race of any kind since losing the second Red Bull seat at the end of last season. He does not accept that a year of watching has cost him anything.
"Physically and in terms of my mind, I think it's sharp enough," Tsunoda said. "I was training for almost every day for a long time. I have a lot of time to train because I didn't have anything to do other than that. Also, I've done four TPCs and within that, I was doing five race [distances]."
His pitch for what happens after Sunday was blunter than most drivers manage.
"It's always better to drive and show what I can do, rather than just talk. I know what I can do but it's always hard to show that or prove that without driving," he said. "Obviously I would love to have a seat next year, but those things are not in my control and I don't have to think about them for now."
Lawson's call reached him in transit.
"I literally landed, I hadn't even got off the plane," he said. "I had come from basically being on break and landed in the UK for what I thought was going to be obviously VCARB prep. Alan [Permane] called me and basically he told me what was going on. So then my week changed pretty quickly."
One simulator session is all the preparation he has had, before a sprint weekend that gives every driver a single hour of practice.
"Everything's really different, to be honest. For me, I'm coming in for this weekend and in a unique situation to try and maximise one weekend," Lawson said. "It's very different to being in your own car, being in your own team."
He has done a version of this before, at this circuit. Lawson's F1 debut came at Zandvoort in 2023 as Daniel Ricciardo's stand-in, after Ricciardo broke his hand in an FP2 crash. Asked to rank the difficulty of the weekend ahead, that is the benchmark he chose.
"Literally I think three years ago was Zandvoort when Daniel had his injury and I jumped in. So, that's got to be number one toughest weekends ever," he said. "I would hope that this is not tougher than that, but it's going to be tricky for sure."
Laurent Mekies, speaking to F1.com on Thursday, played down the injury and then reached for the upside without being asked.
"Isack is alright. He suffered a minor injury in the summer break while training," the Red Bull team principal said. "We have no reason to take any risk with him. We take zero risk, we let him sort out the recovery this weekend."
Then: "That also gives us the opportunity to welcome Liam back, which is very nice. He has been doing a very good job in the first part of the season, he knows this generation of cars very well, and that's the perfect fit."
On whether the man Red Bull dropped after two races in 2025 has earned another look, Mekies did not hedge.
"It's been a very difficult first two races last year for him with the team. I'm sure it was not the end that he deserved," he said. "If we look at how he has managed to reconstruct from there, to rebuild, and the level of performance he has been showing ever since, consistently [...] I think it's very well deserved that he gets that chance. Yuki also gets the chance to go back behind the wheel, and he has been deserving that as well, working patiently in the simulator through the year."
Racing Bulls have a less romantic reading. Team boss Alan Permane has said the intention this year was to give Lawson one clean, uninterrupted season in one car - and for the third time in his career, someone else's injury has taken that away. There is a points cost as well: Lawson's 43 points, ninth in the drivers' championship, are a large slice of the reason Racing Bulls sit fifth among the constructors, and anything he scores this weekend belongs to Red Bull.
Lawson himself declined to treat Zandvoort as an audition for 2027.
"It's been a really good year so far for me and for us as a team, so I haven't really thought anything about that," he said. "For sure, it's a great opportunity, obviously, but at the same time, I've got my championship that I'm also focused on."
Red Bull has not indicated whether Hadjar will be fit for Monza. On that front the calendar helps: for the first time in five years the Dutch and Italian rounds are two weeks apart rather than back-to-back.