Spa, Belgium – Both Oracle Red Bull Racing drivers finished in the points at the Belgium Grand Prix but it wasn’t enough to stretch the Team’s lead in the Constructors’ Championship.
After race-winner George Russell was disqualified after his Mercedes was found to be underweight following post-race checks, his teammate Lewis Hamilton inherited the race win. Everyone else moved up a place which meant Max and Checo finished fourth and seventh respectively.
Checo started the race second on the grid, after Max set the fastest qualifying time on Saturday but had to start from P11 due to a penalty. This boosted his teammate onto the front row. Charles Leclerc inherited pole from the World Champion, and when the lights went out he got away well.
Checo’s get away wasn’t as good and heading into La Source he was passed by Hamilton. Further back, Max got away well, and after avoiding any trouble at Turn 1, the Dutchman surged past Alpine’s Esteban Ocon and Williams’ Alex Albon, and then on lap 2, he picked off Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso to close in on Norris, who was now seventh.
Behind him, with Max bottled up behind Norris, the team attempted the undercut, and on lap 10, the champion dived into the pits for a set of Hard tyres. With the first stops triggered, the frontrunners began to stream into the pits.
Checo, though, was disadvantaged following his stop when he came out behind the slower Aston Martin of Lance Stroll, and that allowed Piastri to close in. Checo got past Stroll as he was called to the pits, but Piastri was too close, and on the run to Les Combes, aided by DRS, the Australian swept past Checo to take P4.
Norris was the last of the frontrunners to pit, five laps after Max, and when the McLaren driver rejoined on Hard tyres, Max was already flying past up the hill to Raidillon. That meant that after the stops, Max was in seventh place, just on the cusp of DRS range of Russell and Checo.
The Mexican was still struggling for speed on the straights, and he was soon passed by Russell. That put the Mexican directly in the path of Max, and as the Bulls ran nose to tail, Norris, on fresher tyres, began to close in. The situation prompted the team to bring Checo in for a set of Hard tyres at the end of lap 20, and that freed Max to chase after Russell.
Leclerc sparked the final round of pit stops at the end of lap 25. When tyre changes had played out, Russell, who had been conservative with his starting tyres, avoided new rubber. He was targeting a one-stop race which he led ahead of Hamilton and Leclerc. Behind them, Checo settled into his second stint and was trying to hang on to seventh.
On lap 39, Checo came under pressure from Sainz, and though the Mexican defended as best he could on ageing tyres, Sainz muscled his way past on the Kemmel straight to demote the Mexican to eighth.
Over the final five laps, all of the frontrunners closed in on Russell, but remarkably, the Mercedes driver was able to keep his fading Hard tyres alive to keep Hamilton and Piastri at bay, and at the end of the 44 laps, Russell took his third career win just half a second ahead of Hamilton, with Piastri a tenth further back in third.
Leclerc clung on to fourth at the flag, just six tenths ahead of Max, who finished another half second ahead of Norris to claim critical points to extend his lead over the Briton in the race for the Drivers’ Championship.
After the race. Russell’s car was weighed and found to be at the minimum 798 kg weight limit. However, after draining 2.8 litres from the fuel tank in order to take his one-litre fuel sample for scrutineering, it was found to be 1.5 kg underweight, and the matter was referred to the stewards, who subsequently disqualified the Briton from the result.
Following a strong comeback from his grid penalty, Max Verstappen said, “All in all it was quite a positive day for me, considering we started at P11, and we finished in front of Lando who is my main rival in the Championship. I think we did everything right with the strategy today and I had a good clean start.
“I was in the DRS train and it was difficult to pass, but I think strategy wise we did everything that we could to the limit. It was tough to make it with two mediums and a hard tyre and we could potentially have taken more position if we started with the hard tyre, but I think we did a good job and maximised our result today.”
Dropping to P7, Sergio Pérez said, “Starting P2 and fighting for the top positions, the race was going well in the first stint and we managed to stay in the pack and had quite an intense fight with Lewis as well, we clipped wheels at the beginning.
“At some point in the second stint it went wrong with the medium tyre when everyone else was on hard tyres, we just didn’t have any pace and it was hard to push. We need to understand what went wrong as we changed a lot on the car but didn’t have the opportunity to try it on the dry as the conditions were so different from qualifying.”
Next up for Oracle Red Bull Racing is the Dutch Grand Prix on the 25th of August.