Wshould he stop him? After the summer break, Max Verstappen started again where he left off before the holidays: with victory tours from the background. The world champion took off with his Red Bull from the seventh row of the grid on Sunday and won the Belgian Grand Prix comfortably ahead of his team-mate Sergio Perez and Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz.
His rival in the fight for the drivers’ title continued to lose ground. Charles Leclerc finished fifth but lost the place to Fernando Alonso in the Alpine due to a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane. His deficit in the World Championship standings on the leader, Verstappen, rose to 98 points. He could grow. “It was fantastic,” said Verstappen, “the car ran like it was on rails. I want more of it.”
Alonso and Hamilton accident
How was it last year in Spa? Rain as far as the eye could see. He didn’t stop and Formula 1 didn’t want to start. At that time, the field then trotted two laps behind the safety car over the track and sold the show as a race, including the awarding of half the point set. The fans were standing in the rain. The sun shone on them on Sunday. And the driver community made amends. Attacks from the start thanks to a curious formation. Because seven pilots, including Verstappen, Leclerc and Mick Schumacher, had the drive and other components changed, they were placed far back on the starting grid. That is what the criminal code requires. More than three units per season are not allowed.
And so the – estimated – 70,000 spectators got their money’s worth: looking at the front with Sainz coming up on pole position for the displaced fastest of the qualification, Verstappen. And while expecting the midfield duel with the title candidates. Leclerc sped behind the champion in 15th place. So where to look?
First to the top, where the seconds of the chief drivers from Ferrari and Red Bull sensed their chance to win. When, if not now? Sainz initially shot away, while Perez initially lost second place. In the lively fight for positions, the pursuers, the supposed beneficiaries of Perez’s first mistake, overshot the target. Lewis Hamilton took off halfway through the chicane after the Kemmel Straight when he rolled over a wheel belonging to Alonso’s Alpine.
A clouded view when calculating a chance to overtake? Alonso saw it this way: “What an idiot. He can only do it if he drives from the front.” The record world champion had to give up a little later, walked to the paddock, collected himself: “I don’t care what Fernando says,” he told TV channel Sky , “It was my mistake, I overlooked him, he was in the blind spot.” Because of the accident and further skirmishes with full contact and wreck production, the race control sent the safety car onto the track. Gas out, come down.
In such moments of relative calm there is time to take a look at the entire field. Then the eyes got big. Sebastian Vettel (eighth) started in tenth place and was now fifth. Verstappen was already eighth ahead of Leclerc. But at this point the two parted ways. The Monegasse turned to pit stop, Verstappen accelerated enormously: sixth in the sixth lap, third in the ninth, first in the twelfth.
Alone in the field: Max Verstappen wins in Spa.
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Image: EPA
The pit stop aria didn’t change anything either. New tires or not, Sainz lost the interim lead back to the 24-year-old champion in no time at all. Because Verstappen needed up to 2.4 seconds less for a lap through the High Fens: 2.4 seconds! An incredible show of power. When the initially indisposed Perez Ferrari man overtook Sainz, Red Bull rushed straight towards triumph, unattainable for the brave Leclerc, untouchable for everyone. Spa and Formula 1 offer a wealth of gripping stories. The most recent is a short one: the race lasted 44 laps. After 18 it was decided.
Why so early, why this huge lead? In the case of Verstappen, he had already announced himself during training on Friday. Always extremely fast, on Saturday, at the grid position race, even a good 0.6 seconds quicker than Sainz. In the first half of the season, Red Bull and Ferrari were more or less on par. In any case, the differences in the lap times fluctuated only slightly, between 0.1 and 0.3 seconds. Verstappen’s racing car is the route from Spa. But the Red Bull was superior everywhere, both on the straights and in the corner combinations where more downforce is needed.
Was superiority solely related to the high level of tire wear at Ferrari, for example, or also to the new directive of the International Automobile Federation (FIA)? Mattia Binotto, head of the Scuderia, rejected a connection on Sunday evening. Since the appearance in Belgium, the FIA measures the rocking of the cars with sensors. The construction of the new generation of racing cars leads to an intake effect that breaks off abruptly when the cars are forced to their knees by the pressure and pull of the air flow and touch down. They soar.
The pendulum movement could be a danger for the drivers, says the FIA and forces the teams to give their cars more ground clearance if the specified vibration value is exceeded. That lowers the pace. A relative loss of speed was also noticeable at Mercedes. Ferrari’s cooperation partner Haas found himself at the end of the field. Mick Schumacher was 17th, just behind his teammate Jan Magnussen.
The discussion about the pitfalls of the technology on Sunday covered the human factor a bit. As much as Verstappen praised his company car, anyone who starts 14th but finishes first 17.8 seconds ahead of their teammate (second on the grid) in the identical car impresses friend and foe alike: “That’s it,” said Mercedes chief engineer Andrew Shovlin , “a bit of a shock.”
