Race Report: Hamilton inherits Belgian GP win

Lewis Hamilton inherits the win of the Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc after George Russell’s Mercedes disqualified. The first sign of a possible Mercedes challenge was Lewis Hamilton’s P3 for qualifying but it was clear they were a team to be reckoned with when Lewis took the lead from Charles Leclerc and George Russell ran comfortably in the top 5 for the first half of the race.

Win

A big win for Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton who took the lead early on and looked set for victory. George Russell did an amazing job of managing his tires to make a 1-stopper work and defended his win to the end ahead of Lewis but his car was found to be 1.5kg under weight and he received a DSQ leaving Lewis in P1.

A win for Oscar Piastri and McLaren to finish ahead of Red Bull and take constructor’s points away. Oscar looked as if he might have something for the win late in the race but the trimmed-out McLaren’s struggled in dirty air and he finished in P3. Still, a good points haul for the team.

It’s a win for Charles Leclerc and Ferrari despite losing the race. Charles did well to hold the lead initially and stayed within striking distance for most of the day. The undercuts caught him out a bit, as well as tire deltas, and he dropped to P4 but Ferrari needed a solid drive and they got one from Charles.

A win for Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon who both looked good and finished in the points. The Alpine’s in particular were trimmed out for speed and Esteban made the best use of that straight-line pace to claim a point.

A win for Spa Francorchamps with the fantastic track condition, sunny weather and 380k fans over the weekend. What a brilliant circuit and amazing strategic race that was.

Fail

An absolute fail for Mercedes for having George’s car under weight after such an amazing job of managing his tires to the end and having enough grip left to fend off a charging Hamilton. An incredible performance from George that was just ruined by the car being around one pound too light. Many suggestions about why that might have been but in the end, the rules were contravened and I doubt it was intentional.

A fail for Red Bull who looked to be the car to beat all weekend but come race time, Max Verstappen got help up behind the McLaren’s and the lack of a second Hard compound tire hobble their strategy a bit. It was odd to see their pace not materialize during the race and the struggle they also seemed to have in dirty air. They did try to throw some strategy at the race but it didn’t pan out for Max or Sergio Perez. The team lost points to McLaren on the weekend.

A fail for Haas F1 who looks doff pace all weekend but finishing down in P19 for Nico Hulkenberg is quite a departure from his recent 6th place finishes. Spa Francorchamps was no friend to the Haas F1 chassis this weekend.

Williams, like Alpine, were trimmed out for speed but unlike Alpine, they couldn’t keep Alex Alton in the points where he ran for a good portion of the race.

A fail for RB who couldn’t nip into the points either and with Yuki Tsunoda starting dead last, that’s understandable but was hoping Daniel could nab a point or two.

Also another fail of Sauber who scored no points once again.

WTH

I’m not sure I really understand why Sky Sports, and others to be fair, have such a different reaction to George or even Lando winning than Lewis. George converted a strategy that looked to consolidate his 4th or 5th place finish into a win. He managed the heck out of his tires and had enough left to defend his win. All it took to change the broadcast was Lewis hinting during his post-race interview with Guenther that the team boxed him with lots of grip left. Then the introspection began. George quickly issued a throw-away line saying Lewis would have won had circumstances been different and Sky Sports began pondering if the team had made the right call. Meanwhile, George just drove one of his best races ever and managed to take a damage limitation one-stopper to victory! A shame he was underweight and got the DSQ because that was one of the drive’s of the season.

Initial headlines for George was that he “outfoxed Lewis Hamilton” for a win. Another said Mercedes “had a 1-2 but heartbreak for Lewis”. One headline pondered if George won that race or had Lewis actually let it slip through his fingers.

What has been interesting is to see the initial headlines about George’s win versus the new headlines about Lewis’s win. The headlines are over-ripe with praise for an amazing victory for Lewis while rather muted, initially, for George’s provisional win. This overweight DSQ exposed a real difference in the machine that is the F1 press in how it presents a win for Lewis versus any other driver…even another British driver.

Pirelli Report:

On the grid, the vast majority of drivers had opted to start on the Medium. The only exceptions were Sainz and Zhou who chose the Hard and Ricciardo who preferred the Soft.

The two-stop was the most popular strategy, while the Hard was the compound that performed best, both in terms of degradation and performance. Zhou was the only driver to retire and of the remaining 19, five of them – in their finishing order –Russell, Alonso, Stroll, Magnussen and Tsunoda, only pitted once, going from the Medium to the Hard, with the first two of these finishing in the points places, respectively first and ninth.

The prize for the longest stint goes to Russell who did 34 laps on the Hard, while on his final stint, Hulkenberg went furthest (24 laps) on the Medium.

Belgian GP Results: