Red Bull’s Max Verstappen took a stunning win at the Belgian GP at Spa from P14 after taking a grid penalty for an engine change. Verstappen was by far the fastest car during the weekend as he even managed pole position but had to start from P14 because of the engine change. His closest competitor in the world championship Charles Leclerc of Ferrari just managed P6 after starting from P15. Leclerc’s race was ruined after an early pitstop during the first safety car as his car collected some debris in the brake cooling system.
His teammate Carlos Sainz Jr who started the race in P1 managed P3 in the race as he couldn’t keep up with the pace of the Red Bulls. Sergio Perez in the second Red Bull finished P2 behind his reigning world champion teammate. George Russell finished in a solid P4 for Mercedes, but his teammate Lewis Hamilton retired from the race after a first-lap collision with Alpine’s Fernando Alonso. Alonso despite the incident managed to finish in P5 having overtaken Leclerc in the dying moments of the race.
Esteban Ocon in the second Alpine managed P7 ahead of Sebastian Vettel in the Aston Martin. Pierre Gasly in the AlphaTauri managed P9 ahead of the Williams of Alex Albon who managed the last points of the race. Lance Stroll came P11 for Aston Martin and Lando Norris continued the trend of outperforming Daniel Ricciardo for McLaren with P12. Yuki Tsunoda came P13 for AlphaTauri while Guanyu Zhou managed P14 for the sole Alfa Romeo as Valtteri Bottas also crashed out in the early segments of the race.
Ricciardo managed P14 ahead of the Haas duo of Magnussen and Schumacher. Latifi in the other Williams managed P18 and was the last car to finish the race. This race means that Verstappen has a lead of almost 100 points on Leclerc.
Result
1 Max Verstappen Red Bull
2 Sergio Perez Red Bull + 17.841
3 Carlos Sainz Ferrari + 27.055
4 George Russell Mercedes + 29.707
5 Fernando Alonso Alpine + 73.860
6 Charles Leclerc Ferrari + 74.936
7 Esteban Ocon Alpine + 76.169
8 Sebastian Vettel Aston Martin +78.631
9 Pierre Gasly AlphaTauri + 92.655
10 Alex Albon Williams + 102.326
11 Lance Stroll Aston Martin + 103.078
12 Lando Norris McLaren + 104.896
13 Yuki Tsunoda AlphaTauri + 105.217
14 Zhou Guanyu Alfa Romeo Racing + 106.252
15 Daniel Ricciardo McLaren + 107.163
16 Kevin Magnussen Haas + 1 LAP
17 Mick Schumacher Haas + 1 LAP
18 Nicholas Latifi Williams + 1 LAP
Did not finish
Valtteri Bottas Alfa Romeo spin – lap 2
Lewis Hamilton Mercedes damage – lap 2
