F1 Blog: what have Ferrari done again? There can be no more talk of a title, a return of the Red Bull of yesteryear. What did the Belgian VC show?

Comment: A dominant Verstappen, a tragic McLaren, a brilliant Alonso and a laughing stock Ferrari – that’s probably a safe way to interpret the Belgian Grand Prix. In our classic little preview, we’ll once again take a look at a specific race, in this case the 14th round of this season at Spa-Francorchamps.

Verstappen’s dominant performance, a return to the old days of Red Bull dominance

Although he started from fourteenth position due to a power unit component change, he took the lead of the Belgian Grand Prix on lap 12. And except when Verstappen stopped by his mechanics, he never dropped the top spot again.

His pace and sheer dominance may have reminded Red Bull fans of the days when Sebastian Vettel was still racing for the Austrian team. The German driver won four championships in a row from 2010 to 2013 and in many ways this victory was similar, as Red Bull boss Christian Horner himself said after the race.

Verstappen was truly off the chain, setting times that were seven to eight tenths of a second faster than his rivals on a fairly regular basis throughout the race. In some parts of the race, the Dutch driver was even a full second faster than his closest pursuers.

On the exit lap with fresh tyres, he even set a lap that was 2.3 seconds faster than that set by his teammate Sergio Pérez in second place!

Verstappen has the situation firmly in his hands

The reigning champion could not have made it clearer that he is going hard to defend his title. And we can assume that the title is already decided. Red Bull currently has the best and fastest car on the grid. Ferrari, moreover, refuses to make any changes and makes incomprehensible mistakes in every race. Mercedes is still coming back into the game.

The warmer conditions on race day also benefited Red Bull, as their car has suffered from front tyre shredding earlier in the season. This made it easier for Verstappen to keep the tyres within the ideal temperature window, which also showed how well he can work with them.

In fact, the reigning world champion lasted the longest on this specification of the four drivers (Verstappen, Leclerc, Bottas, Sainz) who wore the red set of tyres. With the exception of Cunody, all the drivers then started on the yellow, medium compound.

Despite the change of components and starting from the second half of the grid, Red Bull not only didn’t suffer any losses, but they even scored a double in the Belgian VC. In addition, Verstappen has new parts in the guts of his monopost, which will have an effect on his speed and pace in future races. And that’s one more reason why Red Bull has the title fight firmly in its hands.

Scuderia Ferrari and the Belgian Grand Prix

Ferrari and Charles Leclerc have not had a great weekend. The Monegasque driver’s driving error in practice, when he went off the track and hit the barrier, seemed to foreshadow further woes for Ferrari. It’s fair to say the Italian team also had a fair amount of bad luck in the Belgian Grand Prix.

In fact, Leclerc started one position behind Verstappen and, especially in the early laps, was close behind him. However, after all five lights went out, so much happened on track that the Red Bull driver had to rip the foil off the visor of his helmet so early on. And that foil, coincidentally, ended up in the brake duct of Charles Leclerc’s car.

To be clear, F1 drivers have three layers of foil on their helmets, which they peel off gradually during the race to keep the visor clean. And Verstappen ripped one off after the Belgian Grand Prix.

Leclerc had to pit because his Ferrari was overheating its brakes because of the trapped foil. The other thing is also that, as a result of switching to the medium (yellow) set of tyres, Leclerc did not take advantage of the capabilities of the fastest red set of tyres at all. So the Italian team had to switch to a different strategy.

But that’s not as much of a problem as the alibis that Ferrari have been showing throughout this season. Even in the live coverage, we could then watch the team, which has a huge amount of data and detailed telemetry at its disposal, questioning what strategy Leclerc would actually want to apply.

It should be noted, Ferrari made a big mistake in qualifying as well when they fitted Leclerc with a brand new set of tyres instead of the red ones they used. This left the Italian stable with no fresh set of the softest specification tyres left for the race.

43. lap – another big mistake by Ferrari

However, Ferrari produced a strategic disaster at the very end of the Belgian Grand Prix. On the penultimate lap, the Italian stable called fifth-placed Leclerc into the pits for using the softest set of tyres marked in red.

The intention was quite clear – to change to this fastest tyre specification and then try to set the fastest lap of the race. Formula One awards one extra championship point for this. But Ferrari probably didn’t calculate the 19-second gap between fifth-placed Leclerc and sixth-placed Alonso.

But that was the cut-off time for a pit stop at Spa. Alonso thus overtook Leclerc on lap 43 and moved up to fifth. However, the Ferrari-owned Monegasque returned the overtake on the final 44th lap.

However, due to a five-second penalty for exceeding the maximum speed in the pits, Leclerc dropped to sixth place behind Alonso in the results. And that would not have happened if Ferrari had simply left their driver on the track on lap 43. What’s more, Leclerc exceeded the speed limit by just 1 km/h, and he did so during a stop on that penultimate 43rd lap.

Ferrari is a laughing stock, but…

On social media, Ferrari is massively pilloried by its fans, the Italians are even a laughing stock to many F1 fans. And it’s no wonder, because in a post-race interview, even Fernando Alonso himself laughed at them.

“When I saw Charles on lap 43 in front of me, I was surprised that he pitted. But that’s okay. Ferrari does a lot of strange things and this was just another one of them,” said Alonso.

Leclerc, on the other hand, finished the Belgian Grand Prix in sixth place after starting from 15th position and despite replacing components on his power unit, gained nine positions in the race.

His Spanish teammate Sainz finished third and scored his seventh podium this season. It should also be noted that apart from three retirements, he finished in the top five every time. Leclerc, apart from three retirements, has never finished worse than sixth.

But the fact remains that all of this could be considered decent results if Ferrari had not entered the new era with clearly the best monocoque, hadn’t deprived itself of points, had no title ambitions and their boss Mattia Binotto wasn’t displaying the kind of alibis he’s currently showing.

Mercedes is looking for a new car after the summer break

The German stable brought a big package of improvements to Belgium, but it seems as if the team around Lewis Hamilton has failed to fully activate them. In qualifying, the seven-time world champion even lost 1.8 seconds to the fastest Verstappen. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff then tearfully admitted that this was the worst qualifying result in a decade.

But as Mercedes have shown throughout this season, Hamilton in particular can conjure up much better pace in a race. This time, however, the British driver retired after the first lap due to a collision with Alonso. However, the interesting fact is that Russell was able to set comparable or even better times than Sainz and Pérez in the race. And that’s on both a medium and hard set of tyres.

Nevertheless, Russell did not take the podium. The plus side for Mercedes, though, is that they can continually improve and react quickly to their setbacks compared to Ferrari. And that’s one of the aspects that will make the battle for second place in the Constructors’ Cup even more interesting.

Tragic McLaren

According to the FIA, the British Woking stable has brought its biggest upgrade yet to Belgium. A new rear wing, revised floor and front suspension were the modifications that were supposed to make the MCL36 a slightly more competitive car.

But that hasn’t happened, and McLaren looks more lost than ever. The saga surrounding Daniel Ricciardo hasn’t done the team any favours either, and this is probably the topic that’s been discussed most around McLaren. The new concept and the involvement of Oscar Piastri does give the team some hope for the future, but we’ll see what McLaren comes up with next year.

It’s no secret that work on the cars for next season has already started, and not just at McLaren. However, if McLaren loses the battle for fourth place in the Constructors’ Cup to Alpine, it will mean a significant loss to the stable’s budget.

Alonso best of the rest of the world

A lot has been written about Alpin and Alonso. Especially with the transfer merry-go-round that got into full swing over the summer break. The Spanish legend has announced a move to Aston Martin, while Piastri is also not interested in Alpino and hopes to move to McLaren.

But as it stands at the moment, Alpine seems to be doing much better than McLaren in terms of performance and race pace. In fact, Alpine has decent straight-line speed, as we saw in Belgium. Alonso came home for fifth place, Esteban Ocon for seventh. And even though Alpine is still the factory team, it was a good weekend for the French team.

In fact, in addition to the results, Alpine got a lot of data from its drivers. In fact, the French team brought a redesigned floor to Belgium and repositioned the brake lines to interfere less with the car’s aerodynamics, making the rear wing work more efficiently.

Ocon then gained a total of nine positions from a sixteenth-place start and performed some great overtaking manoeuvres.

Spa-Francorchamps

The important news for Formula 1 fans is that the circuit in the picturesque surroundings of the Ardennes forests will remain on the World Championship calendar next season. And this is thanks to the failure of all negotiations with South African officials in the context of hosting the F1 Grand Prix in Kyalami.

Despite this, it is still expected that Formula 1 will return to the African continent after all, as early as 2024. And given the great marketing growth of the queen of motorsport and the increasing interest of other countries to host F1 races, it is unclear what the future holds for the legendary Spa-Francorchamps circuit.

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