Verstappen won the chaotic sprint in Spa! Hamilton penalised, Alonso and Pérez retire

At first all participants were worried about whether they would run at all because of the heavy rain, but then we got a really dramatic and sometimes chaotic F1 Sprint. Max Verstappen took the win, with Oscar Piastri and Pierre Gasly coming in for an amazing second and third respectively.

Saturday’s F1 Sprint, like the Sprint Qualifying, had to be postponed by around half an hour due to the adverse conditions. After the race directorate gave the green light for today’s 100km race, the Safety Car took all the monoblocs out for a warm-up lap.

There were eventually five of them, causing Saturday’s race to be shortened to 11 laps. And after the first green flag lap, the Spa-Francorchamps circuit was already in total chaos. In any case, you can see below how the starting grid looked at the start of the sprint.

Thanks to the improved driving conditions, a number of drivers pitted to change from a set of extreme wet tyres to the intermediate one.

The same was true on the second lap taken. As a result of these two laps, when the entire starting field went to their mechanics, the sprint order became very mixed. Oscar Piastri took the lead, chased by Max Verstappen.

Pierre Gasly was third at this point, Sergio Pérez fourth, Lewis Hamilton fifth, Carlos Sainz sixth, Charles Leclerc seventh, Lando Norris eighth, Daniel Ricciardo ninth and Esteban Ocon rounding out the elite ten.

At the end of the third lap, however, racing stopped again for a while. Fernando Alonso made a driving mistake and ended up in a duck, from which he was unable to get out. The Safety Car had to be put on the track.

He pitted at the end of the fifth lap and on lap six Verstappen overtook Piastri to take the lead in the sprint. Behind the top three, however, it was a tough battle for position. Hamilton and Pérez faced each other in a battle for fourth place.

It was the latter who took the brunt of it, losing downforce at the rear of his monobloc due to damage to his car and dropping down the order. As a result, the Mexican driver retired from the race on lap 9 of 11, with Hamilton collecting a five-second penalty.

Fifth and sixth place belonged to the Ferrari drivers, with Norris seventh. Ricciardo was still hoping to score at least one point before the last lap, but George Russell subsequently overtook him to move up to eighth.

So how did Saturday’s sprint go, even taking into account Hamilton’s penalty? Verstappen took the win ahead of Piastri, with Gasly holding third. Fourth went to Sainz, fifth to Leclerc, sixth to Norris, with Hamilton dropping to seventh.

The last eighth position in the sprint was therefore taken by Russell. Sunday’s main race, the Belgian Grand Prix, is scheduled for 15:00.

Source: F1 TV