Piastri wins straightforward Belgian Grand Prix after rain delay
Following a delay of more than an hour due to poor visibility, the skies cleared up and Oscar Piastri punched past pole sitter Norris in the first lap to lead the race to victory at the Belgian Grand Prix. Lando Norris finished second with Charles Leclerc maintaining position and ending third.
Hardly to anyone's surprise, the Belgian Grand Prix was set to start on a wet track as weather conditions have once again been very changing over the weekend. For the Formula One drivers, the race is the first moment they experience a wet track this weekend. After heavy rain forced the F3 race cancellation, Formula One was set to start in time thanks to clearing skies.
The very wet track still triggered race control to let the Safety Car lead the pack on the installation lap. During that lap, lots of spray was obvious, leading to a red flag situation and a postponement of the race start. The safety car entered the pitlane followed by all drivers where they all parked in the fast lane to await better conditions.
More rain fell over the course of the next hour, but eventually the skies somewhat cleared and the medical car was sent out to gauge the conditions at about 16:00 local time. The signal was then given for a resumption at 16:20 with at least 2 laps behind the safety car.
Everybody got rolling at the scheduled time, discovering that conditions had improved but visibility was still poor up the Raidillon and on the Kemmel straight that follows next. The track seemed to dry rapidly apart from the main straight, so after 4 laps behind the safety car, the lights of the safety car went out and a rolling start would kick off the Grand Prix.
At the chicane before the finish line Piastri looked already extremely close and after the subsequent hairpin he positioned himself well to take the lead at Combes with a nice slipstream on the long straight. It was the only position change of the restart.
George Russell passed Albon one lap later while Stroll improved to 16th, only to drop back into 19th one lap later, ahead only of his teammate Fernando Alonso.
On lap 7 Hamilton made some progress by overtaking Sainz, followed by Colapinto half a lap later. Hamilton didn't sit about and went on to pressure Hulkenberg and overtake him quickly in lap 8. Gasly was up next and quickly fell victim to Hamilton's better pace.
The other Ferrari driver meanwhile was mostly busy looking in his mirrors. Leclerc reported his tyres were dead on lap 11 and clearly had issues trying to keep Verstappen behind.
By the end of that lap the first drivers were called into the pits, including Hamilton, Hulkenberg, Gasly and Alonso. Piastri was stopped the next lap, immediately followed by Leclerc, Verstappen, Russell and pretty much everyone else. Norris, Tsunoda, and Hadjar were the last stoppers while Hamilton proved the early stop was the right one. After the stops had been done, Hamilton found himself 7th, right behind Albon who himself wasn't far off Leclerc, Verstappen and Russell.
Same goes for Alonso who also pitted as one of the first. The Spaniard ended up in 13th while Stroll, who stopped one lap later was 18th. As the track dried further, the Spaniard was kindly reminded how Aston wasn't in great shape at Spa when Bearman breezed past him on the Kemmel straight.
What followed was mainly a battle behind Gasly as he seemed to hold up a lot of drivers behind him. The difficulty to pass this year though meant the train lasted for a long time with mainly overtakes behind the Frenchman. Colapinto went backwards and eventually pitted to switch to a new set of mediums. Alonso dropped another position when Antonelli flew past while Stroll cleared Sainz and Ocon to move into 16th.
Alonso pitted on lap 30 and returned to the track in 17th place. Mercedes were awake and covered the Spaniard's stop with a tyre switch for Antonelli, ensuring he maintained track position over the Spaniard.
Up in front, Piastri continued to lead the race with about 8 seconds ahead of Norris. The latter repeatedly posted the fastest lap but mixed that up with some mistakes, leading to a more or less stable gap between the two McLarens. Together however they pulled away from Leclerc.
As Antonelli and Alonso proved that newer tyres were faster indeed, their inability to quickly overtake Ocon meant that their pitstops were futile.
Piastri on the other hand started to really feel that his medium tyres were less durable than Norris' hard tyres. Even though the Briton had been told to take it easy on the brakes after a lockup at Turn 1, the gap between the McLaren duo continued to gradually decrease, down to 4.1 seconds with 3 laps remaining.
The gap further reduced for another lap, but then Norris understood it was pretty much done, bringing home another great 1-2 for McLaren and a quite third place for Ferrari.
