In the words of Sergio Pérez, Max Verstappen “was flying. He was on another planet” during Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix.
The Dutchman faced an uphill battle after taking a “back of the grid” penalty alongside a slew of other Formula One drivers, including title rival Charles Leclerc. Despite a P14 start, Verstappen surged through the field.
He led the race before the end of lap 12, and while there was the help of the safety car early on—after a collision between Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso and then Valtteri Bottas spinning to avoid Nicholas Latifi—Verstappen won by an easy 17.8 seconds, with teammate Pérez taking second and Carlos Sainz holding on for third.
“The hardest bit was lap 1 to stay out of trouble, because it was very hectic in front of me and I just really didn’t want to be involved, but yes, we came through quite well,” Verstappen said. “Then you know it calmed down with the Safety Car, and basically from there, it was literally trying to overtake a car every lap. And once I realized I was third, I could see we can win this race.”
George Russell and Alonso rounded out the top five after Leclerc, who finished fifth, was dealt a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane. Ferrari opted to pit him during the final stretch of the race in an effort to run the fastest lap, but that honor also went to Verstappen instead.
Alonso said to Sky Sports F1 that he was surprised by the move, "but Ferrari always does some strange strategies so that was one of those.”
Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto defended the move, saying, “you need to be brave in F1” and that “it was the right decision.” Ultimately, it was a sensor failure from overheating that led to Leclerc’s “unlucky” speeding in the pit lane, which Binotto said was “really borderline” speeding as well.
Meanwhile, Pierre Gasly went from a pit lane start to a points finish in his 100th Grand Prix. Williams’s Alex Albon also held on for a points finish, capping off a hectic day filled with overtaking.
With a 1-2 for Red Bull, Pérez jumped five points ahead of Leclerc for second in the driver standings while Verstappen extends his title push to 98 points over the Ferrari driver. As for the teams, Red Bull is 118 points clear of Ferrari and seeking their first team title in eight years, which has been dominated by Mercedes.
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Here’s three takeaways from the Belgian Grand Prix, where Verstappen competed in a class of his own and the on and off the track battle between McLaren and Alpine continued to brew.
World Champion 101
Whatever lingering feelings F1 fans may have after the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix doesn’t negate that Verstappen has shown championship-caliber racing this season.
Sunday marked the Dutchman’s second consecutive race in which he started 10th or lower and powered back to win—something that hasn’t happened since Bruce McLaren in 1959-60.
Within five laps, Verstappen muscled his way to seventh while on the soft tires. And by lap 18, the Dutchman had taken the lead, pitted and then regained the lead over Sainz. He cruised to victory in front of thousands of Dutch fans who traveled to Spa-Francorchamps.
Although members of the grid predicted Verstappen would power his way back as quickly as he did (and some even went as far as to say he’d win like he did from a P10 start in Hungary), Red Bull team principal Christian Horner told Sky Sports that he “never expected Max to win that race.”
He went on to say Verstappen was “patient” as the collisions occurred in the first lap before he “picked his way through it.”
Fans and the paddock could tell a storm was brewing from the moment Red Bull hit the track for practice on Friday. The pace was strong, as was evident by Verstappen’s qualifying performance that placed him six-tenths of a second ahead of Sainz. Come Sunday, Red Bull's tire management was among the best and had a strong presence in the straights and corners.
“I think if you look at the whole weekend, yes, the car has been incredible from FP1. I don’t think we expected it to be like this but sometimes it’s nice when things positively surprise you, and it’s been really enjoyable to drive the car around here this year,” Verstappen said when asked if it was one of his most dominant wins. “I don’t expect it to be like that every single race weekend… just because of the track layout, more downforce on the car to get round, less straights as well.”
Former F1 driver Felipe Massa previously told Sports Illustrated, “To win the championship, everything needs to be perfect. It’s not only on the driver side, it’s not only on the car side, it’s not only on the team side, it’s not only on the strategy side, so everything needs to work in the perfect way.” Compared to the rest of the grid, Red Bull has been the team to beat in terms off consistency and reliability after a few DNFs early on in the season. After all, Verstappen said it himself over the team radio—“car was a rocket ship all weekend.”
The one-two punch of Verstappen and Pérez has led to consistent high-point finishes for Red Bull: the two have shared the podium five of 14 races so far this season, and four of those have been 1-2 finishes, bringing home maximum points to Milton Keynes.
“Red Bull, Max and Checo, they were in a league of their own today,” Sainz said after the Belgian Grand Prix. He went on to later add, “I think we would lie if we wouldn’t say that we are surprised, because the gap was certainly much bigger, or the biggest we’ve seen all season across the two teams. And it’s certainly something that we didn’t expect, which means that we need to go back and analyze why at this sort of track we are so weak.
“We still need to analyze, take some conclusions and try to come back with a better low-downforce package for Monza, in case we are not so strong there also.”
With the second race of the triple-header just seven days away, Verstappen seemed cautious about the Dutch Grand Prix, saying “it will be closer, yes. But we of course again made a bigger gap which is of course very nice, but we know that we have to score points every single weekend.”
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Alex Albon, Williams and the case of the “slippery” car
“That was one of the best races I think I’ve done,” the 26-year-old said over the radio to his team. And it arguably was.
Albon secured his first Q3 appearance of the 2022 season on Saturday, navigating his Williams car to a P6 start on Sunday after the grid penalties to other drivers on the grid were given. But even on pure pace, Albon qualified ninth, something that should not be overlooked.
Albon’s start marked the highest start for Williams since George Russell’s P3 at Sochi last campaign, and it placed the team in the prime spot to compete for its third points finish of 2022 and its first since the inaugural Miami Grand Prix in May.
Knowing the title rivals would be coming from the latter half of the grid, Albon was realistic about his expectations for Sunday’s grand prix, saying, per formula1.com, after qualifying, “Overtaking here is on the easier side, so we will need to see what we’ve done. No one has really done any long runs, which is making it a little bit more unpredictable, but we also have a slippery car so hopefully that makes it more difficult to overtake.”
Come Sunday, the 26-year-old found himself leading a DRS train filled with rivals. He said, per RaceFans, “after the start, I was like, ‘it’s gonna be a long race.’ I could already feel it on the laps to grid, that the degradation was going to be really high. It was amazing how the track temp just made the tires struggle that much more. Pirelli have a very high minimum pressure limit and it just really doesn’t suit us with the downforce set-up that we had in the car.” Albon started on mediums and used a two-stop strategy, arguably delivering one of his best race performances thus far in his career.
The Williams’ straight line speed was one other teams kept an eye on, and Albon soon had a queue of drivers—Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll, McLaren’s Lando Norris, AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda, Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu and McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo—trailing him by the end of the race.
“The more I saw, the better I felt because I was like ‘the train’s forming, that’s nice, that means everyone’s got a bit of pressure themselves,’” Albon said, RaceFans. “When it’s just you and a car behind, they can afford to drop back, they can come back at you, do different things. But when you have a train, everyone has to follow the speed and they can’t afford to cool the tires down, the brakes or whatever it may be. So when I saw the train, I was like, ‘yeah, good, bring it on.’”
In the end, Albon snagged a single point with a 10th place finish in what he called “a battle of survival.”
Alpine vs. McLaren heats up—on and off the track
The two teams continued to be the talk of the paddock this weekend because of the situation involving Alonso, Ricciardo, Oscar Piastri and the case of 2023.
Following the Hungarian Grand Prix, there was a flurry of moves. It was announced that Fernando Alonso will make the jump to Aston Martin in 2023, and a day later, Alpine said its reserve driver, Piastri, would compete alongside Esteban Ocon next season. Only the 21-year-old refuted the claim, going as far as to tweet, in part, “I will not be driving for Alpine next year.” By the end of that week, it had been widely reported that McLaren informed Ricciardo that it intended to replace the eight-time race winner with Piastri next season.
Then, the summer shutdown happened, but that didn’t mean the debacle would disappear during the 14 days. McLaren and Ricciardo “mutually agreed” to split at the end of the 2022 season, the two parties confirmed on Aug. 24.
It is still unknown where Piastri and Ricciardo will compete next season, but the young reserve driver’s destiny should be determined in the coming days with his contract set to be reviewed by the FIA on Monday. Alpine boss Otmar Szafnauer confirmed to Sky Sports F1 that Piastri and McLaren do have an agreement for next season.
“He’s a promising young driver, he hasn’t driven in Formula One yet, and my wish for Oscar is he had a bit more integrity,” Szafnauer said to Sky. “He signed a piece of paper as well back in November and we’ve done everything on our end of the bargain to prepare him for Formula One, and his end of the bargain was to either drive for us, or take a seat where we would place him for the next three years.
“I just wish Oscar would have remembered what he signed in November and what he signed up to.”
McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown did not hesitate to respond to Szafnauer’s “integrity” remark when speaking with Sky Sports News. He went as far as raising the debacle around Racing Point in 2020 and its controversial car.
“Judging by recent times and the way Fernando caught Otmar by surprise,” Brown said. “And not too long ago he was the recipient of a €400,000 fine and 15 points - I’m not sure he comes with the highest level of credibility and making accusations of ethics.”
Despite the comments, Szafnauer reiterated his confidence in Alpine’s contract with Piastri during Saturday’s press conference. He also later added that when Piastri was told he’d replace Alonso, he “smiled and was thankful.”
Meanwhile, the two camps are also fighting it out for fourth in the constructor standings. It had been a closely contested battle with Alpine having a four-point lead over the Woking-based team going into summer break. But between that double points finish and another in Belgium after Norris and Ricciardo finished P12 and P15, respectively, Alpine extended its hold on fourth to a 20-point difference.
