@Max33Verstappen recovers from 13th on grid to take dominant #BelgianGP victory. #F1

Verstappen Belgian GP victory – Max Verstappen lead home team-mate Sergio Perez to a Red Bull one-two victory at the Belgian GP to extend his championship lead to 93 points. Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz completed the top three.

 

 

The reigning world champion took control of events at the Circuit De Spa-Francorchamps, moving into first place on the 12^th tour before flying to a 17.841 second win.

 

With the Red Bull RB18 having solid straight-line speed to allow Perez to fly past pole-sitter Sainz on the Kemmel Straight, the Mexican came home second.

 

Meanwhile, Sainz rounded out the top three ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell as Sir Lewis Hamilton retired on the opening lap after a first lap crash with former McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso.

 

Despite topping the qualifying session by 0.632 over Sainz, Verstappen was dropped down the order due to exceeding power-unit component limits – but an electrical glitch on the grid for Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly promoted the Dutchman to start 13^th, one spot over Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

 

That looked to leave it up to second-placed starter Perez to take the fight to Sainz, but he got a slow launch to drop to fifth into Les Combes behind both Mercedes and Alonso.

 

With the medium tyre-starting RB18 falling down, soft-starting Sainz was given an easy run to La Source to hold first place ahead of the Alpine as Hamilton went into the slipstream of Alonso on the climb up the hill.

 

But the duo tangled into Les Combes, Alonso appeared to be fully over the inside kerb, but was squeezed by the F1 W13 entry as Hamilton’s right-rear tyre clunked the Spaniard’s front-left tyre.

 

This launched the Silver Arrows’ back axle into the air and although the Briton initially re-joined, he was very slow and quickly peeled off due to a loss of water pressure.

 

The yellow flags became a safety car after Williams Racing’s Nicholas Latifi and Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas collided at the exit of the chicane, with the C42 ending up in the gravel trap.

 

As 15^th-starting Alpine of Esteban Ocon messed up the corner to run over the inside sausage kerb, the A522 racer looked to put Latifi off-line as he ran wide and dipped into the gravel to send the Williams into a spin.

 

Bottas was innocently caught out and turned around to retire. However, both this and the Alonso-Hamilton tangle passed without any penalties handed out following their respective investigations.

 

However, Hamilton was given a reprimand for not visiting the medical centre despite his crash exceeding the maximum impact limit.

 

Sainz lost his initial 2.1 second gap over Perez to the safety car as Russell went into third place in-front of Alonso and a flying Aston Martin of Sebastian Vettel, who came up from ninth.

 

Meanwhile Leclerc, was forced to pit at the end of the third tour after a visor tear-off lodged itself in the front-right brake duct causing overheating and reports of smoke.

 

He stopped from ninth, one position behind championship-rival Verstappen, for C3 yellow-marked mediums.

 

As the safety car came in on lap four, Sainz lead a very slow restart and locked-up at the Bus Stop Chicane, but a good exit kept him clear of Perez.

 

The Mexican locked up at La Source, forcing him to worry about Russell behind as Sainz moved to a 1.2 second gap.

 

Meanwhile, Verstappen overtook McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo and used DRS to fly past Alonso for fourth place on the Kemmel Straight with 1.6 seconds to chase the Mercedes in-front. It only took until the eighth tour before Verstappen got by Russell to get into the final podium place.

 

The 2.6 gap to team-mate Perez was wiped out, but Verstappen was unable to get past, with the former not making it easy as he could have done into Les Combes.

 

But with an early fastest lap effort done, and after complaining about the “silly” amount of time lost, Verstappen closed and slipstreamed past the Mexican out of Eau Rouge.

 

With Ferrari stopping Sainz for a set of Pirelli C3 yellow side-walled medium compounds at the end of the 11^th lap before losing time emerging behind Ricciardo, Verstappen’s initial move to first place was completed.

 

As Verstappen mastered running the more delicate softer tyres in warmer temperatures than experienced at any point over the race weekend, the Red Bull driver was more able to gain more life out of them than usual tyre whisperer in team-mate Perez on the mediums.

 

Although, Red Bull called in Perez at the end of the 14^th tour for another set of the yellow-branded medium rubber whilst Verstappen remained out on track and continued to run the softs.

 

With Perez keeping Leclerc at bay as he emerged, the Red Bull squeezing the F1-75 on the outside into Les Combes to the point where both slightly touched.

 

Verstappen eventually made his way to pit on lap 15 as his traction levels deteriorated, as Red Bull swapped his softs for mediums to re-join in-front of team-mate Perez.

 

This left Sainz with a 4.7 second lead to protect, with the Ferrari’s rubber now four laps old. But Verstappen ate into the lead and on the 17^th tour, he was on the F1-75’s rear.

 

P1 and the eventual victory would effectively be decided when Verstappen shot up Eau Rouge and used DRS to jump Sainz into Les Combes.

 

Three laps later, Perez was on Sainz’s tail and dummied Sainz on the Kemmel Straight to overtake the Ferrari around the outside for second place and a Red Bull one-two.

 

Sainz pitted again on lap 25, swapping to the harder compounds as Leclerc was put on mediums. Verstappen made his final pit-stop on lap 30 also for mediums and emerged with an eight second lead over Perez.

 

Lapping consistently faster than his Red Bull team-mate, Verstappen was able to claim the Belgian GP victory with the fastest lap bonus point and ahead of team-mate Perez by 17.841 seconds and 93 points clear in the Driver’s Standings.

 

With Perez on the harder compound to cover Sainz, the Mexican reached the chequered flag nine seconds ahead of the Ferrari as Russell came home fourth 2.2 seconds behind the F1-75 entry.

 

Leclerc pitted on the penultimate tour for a set of softs to attempt to capture the fastest lap bonus point off Verstappen. But on cooler tyres, was released into the path of Alonso.

 

The Spaniard snatched fifth place from Leclerc, and whilst Leclerc took the position back on the final tour, he missed out on the bonus point and was slapped with a five-second time penalty for speeding in the pit-lane and relegated back down to sixth.

 

Ocon crossed the line in seventh for Alpine, assisted by a double overtake on the Kemmel Straight as he picked up a powerful slip-stream from Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel and Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly.

 

Vettel lead the Frenchman as Williams Racing’s Alexander Albon rounded out the top ten.

 

For much of the second half of the Grand Prix, Albon kept a train of cars at bay – the queue led by Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll who was 11^th, followed by McLaren’s Lando Norris who was 12th, AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda in 13th, Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu 14th and Ricciardo 15th.

 

Haas F1 Team’s Kevin Magnussen lead team-mate Mick Schumacher for 16^th and 17^th respectively as Latifi brought up the rear in 18^th.

---

2022 Belgian GP – The Top Three

 

 

2022 Belgian GP Winner – Max Verstappen, #1, Oracle Red Bull Racing-RBPT, RB18:

“Hectic first lap to stay out of trouble, but after the Safety Car, the car was on rails. After that once we were in the lead, just managing everything. The whole weekend was incredible. It’s been a weekend I couldn’t imagine; I’m going to enjoy today and then next week let’s see what we can do.”

 

2^nd Place – Sergio Perez, #11, Oracle Red Bull Racing-RBPT, RB18:

“I really hoped for more, but Max was just flying, he was on another planet. He was untouchable. Still, a strong result for the team and I think we managed to get a lot of points today which is important.”

 

3^rd Place – Carlos Sainz, #55, Scuderia Ferrari, F1-75:

“Harder than expected, the pace was just not there. We had a lot of overheating of the tyres, we were sliding around a lot. The Red Bull, Max and Checo, they were in a league of their own today.”

 

Formula 1 Rolex Belgian Grand Prix 2022 Race Results Classification (44 Laps)

POS	NO	DRIVER	CAR	LAPS	TIME/RETIRED	PTS
1	1	Max Verstappen	RED BULL RACING RBPT	44	1:25:52.894	26
2	11	Sergio Perez	RED BULL RACING RBPT	44	+17.841s	18
3	55	Carlos Sainz	FERRARI	44	+26.886s	15
4	63	George Russell	MERCEDES	44	+29.140s	12
5	14	Fernando Alonso	ALPINE RENAULT	44	+73.256s	10
6	16	Charles Leclerc	FERRARI	44	+74.936s	8
7	31	Esteban Ocon	ALPINE RENAULT	44	+75.640s	6
8	5	Sebastian Vettel	ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES	44	+78.107s	4
9	10	Pierre Gasly	ALPHATAURI RBPT	44	+92.181s	2
10	23	Alexander Albon	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	44	+101.900s	1
11	18	Lance Stroll	ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES	44	+103.078s	0
12	4	Lando Norris	MCLAREN MERCEDES	44	+104.739s	0
13	22	Yuki Tsunoda	ALPHATAURI RBPT	44	+105.217s	0
14	24	Zhou Guanyu	ALFA ROMEO FERRARI	44	+106.252s	0
15	3	Daniel Ricciardo	MCLAREN MERCEDES	44	+107.163s	0
16	20	Kevin Magnussen	HAAS FERRARI	43	+1 lap	0
17	47	Mick Schumacher	HAAS FERRARI	43	+1 lap	0
18	6	Nicholas Latifi	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	43	+1 lap	0
NC	77	Valtteri Bottas	ALFA ROMEO FERRARI	1	DNF	0
NC	44	Lewis Hamilton	MERCEDES	0	DNF	0

* Provisional results

https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2022/races/1118/belgium/race-result.html

 

Click here for the 2022 Formula 1 World Driver’s (Top 10) and Constructors Championship Standings.

 

Round 16 of the 2022 FIA Formula One World Championship heads straight to the legendary Circuit Zandvoort in Zandvoort, North Holland, Netherlands for the Formula 1 Heineken Dutch Grand Prix 2022 from Friday September 2-Sunday September 4.

---

#BelgianGP Qualifying: @Max33Verstappen quickest, but @Carlossainz55 takes pole due to grid penalties. #F1

#BelgianGP FP2: @Max33Verstappen tops time-sheets ahead of @CharlesLeclerc. #F1

#BelgianGP FP1: @Carlossainz55 leads @CharlesLeclerc in @ScuderiaFerrari one-two. #F1

#Formula1 @Rolex #BelgianGP 2022 Preview. #F1 #BelgianGrandPrix