After a penalty, Max Verstappen has to start from 14th place – and still wins the Belgian Grand Prix by a clear margin. Formula 1 seems powerless in the face of his dominance. Lewis Hamilton crashes, Mick Schumacher doesn’t do much, but at least Sebastian Vettel can be happy.
Max Verstappen does it (almost) like Michael Schumacher – and removes the last question marks as to whether someone can still stop him on the way to his second world title. Rolled into the starting grid as 14th and then even started as 13th due to problems with Pierre Gasly’s AlphaTauri, the Dutchman won the Belgian Grand Prix in demoralizing dominance. Formula 1 record world champion Schumacher had triumphed from 16th place in Spa in 1995, but had to fight a lot more. “Great Sunday guys,” said the Championship leader over the radio.
With his ninth win of the season, Verstappen demoted his fellow drivers to extras and is almost decisively leading the World Championship with 284 points. The new “pursuer” after 14 of 22 races is his Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez (191), who started second and also finished this place a clear 17.8 seconds behind. Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz was third. Ferrari’s hopeful Charles Leclerc started directly behind Verstappen, he initially moved up to fifth place before a time penalty for driving too fast in the pits dropped him to sixth place.
None of the 20 drivers started from the position for which they qualified. The reason for this was the relegation of eight drivers whose racing cars had engine parts and gearboxes changed. These included Verstappen, Leclerc and also Mick Schumacher. The Haas driver had no chance of scoring points from the very back and finished 17th. Sebastian Vettel (Aston Martin) fared much better, finishing eighth in an unremarkable race.
“Max will probably win fairly easily,” said Mercedes driver George Russell before the race after the Dutchman had been in a class of his own in qualifying. Verstappen is “in super shape. It will be difficult for the others,” predicted Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko before the classic in Spa-Francorchamps, which will also be on the racing calendar in 2023.
This year’s race in Spa started spectacularly: Pole setter Sainz got the best start, behind him record world champion Lewis Hamilton attacked his old rival Fernando Alonso, passed the Alpine but didn’t give the Spaniard enough space. There was a collision, Hamilton took off spectacularly, landed roughly and had to park his Mercedes shortly afterwards, badly damaged. “What an idiot,” Alonso scolded on the radio. Hamilton admitted his mistake after being lonely on a dirt road back in
Verstappen had already made up five places after the first lap before a safety car phase played into his hands. The trigger was a spin by Williams driver Nicholas Latifi on lap two, which sent Valtteri Bottas’ Alfa Romeo out of play.
At Leclerc, a part got caught in the brake ventilation, the Monegasse had to make an unscheduled stop after four laps and fell far behind – while Verstappen took fifth place from Vettel in the sixth lap. After a quarter of the race distance of 44 laps, Verstappen was finally at the front. Helmut Marko probably didn’t expect it to be so easy either.
After his first tire change, Verstappen initially fell behind Sainz again, but he was only able to celebrate first place for a few minutes: Verstappen was sometimes more than two seconds per lap faster than the Spaniard. In the final phase, Verstappen controlled events as he pleased, but the gap to the competition was still clear. Despite bad omens: Verstappen’s 29th Grand Prix victory was one of his easier ones.
