Victory for Antonelli at Spa, but it was far from easy
Kimi Antonelli has won today's Belgian Grand Prix. Ferrari's Charles Leclerc made him work hard for it but that was clearly better pace in the Mercedes. Driver of the day Leclerc still finished a close second while Max Verstappen was happy to make it to the podium in third place.
The Belgian Grand Prix was expected to remain dry despite some threatening clouds around. With a bone dry track at the start, the top 12 started on medium tyres while Norris in 13th was the best placed car on the hard compound Pirellis. Norris was surely hoping to move through the field after being third fastest in qualifying.
The warm-up lap was completed very quickly by Antonelli, forcing him to wait for a long time before the last driver, Alonso - hit by a penalty for taking new control electronics - was in position.
When the red lights went, Antonelli had a decent start but it was Verstappen who took the lead into Eau Rouge. That had Verstappen in the lead on the Kemmel straight, enabling Antonelli and Leclerc to draft behind him, both passing him into Turn 5. Behind that battle, Russell was fighting with Hamilton and got bumped into the gravel, immediately ending his race and triggering a safety car. Hamilton had a brief moment of oversteer and the correction led to contact with Russell. Hamilton was later given a 5 second time penalty for causing that collision.
Ocon immediately pitted with a puncture which he incurred at Fagnes as Bearman passed him. Bearman and the two Cadillacs stopped too while Hadjar made a double stop, doing a single lap on mediums before switching back to hards.
The incident between Russell and Hamilton meanwhile allowed Piastri to sneak through into 4th. Lawson got up to 6th ahead of his teammate Lindblad. Colapinto was 8th behind the SC, followed by Bortoleto, Norris, Gasly, Albon, Hulkenberg, Sainz, Alonso, Stroll. Bearman was best positioned of those who already pitted in 17th, then Perez, Bottas, Ocon and Hadjar.
The safety car period ended at the end of lap 4. The restart was very early with Antonelli hammering the throttle already at Blanchimont. Leclerc saw it but Verstappen was caught out and nowhere near Leclerc when they crossed the finish line to start lap 5. Piastri and Hamilton battled through Eau Rouge but Piastri held the position.
By the end of that lap however Verstappen recovered from that restart and set the fastest lap, closing into Leclerc and eventually passing the Ferrari on the Kemmel straight to take second place and record another fastest lap, quickly getting within less than a second of Antonelli.
Next up Piastri was looking to take third place away from Leclerc and came very close but got squeezed off the track on the outside at the end of Kemmel straight. Piastri quickly noted Leclerc did not leave enough space, reporting "this could've been a massive crash". There was definitely contact and a piece of carbon of the McLaren's right hand side floor was seen flying away. Leclec strangely escaped a penalty for the move. The problem for Piastri was that backing out of it meant he came under threat of Hamilton. The latter followed it up with a clean pass the next lap, dropping Piastri to 5th.
Two laps later Leclerc did exactly the same defensive more to Hamilton, the latter backing out early having seen how things unfolded with Piastri two laps earlier. Hamilton tried to have another go the next lap but was again chopped off, this time triggering a little note from Hamilton: "I'm quicker than Charles. I have more pace".
At the start of lap 15, Antonelli very slowly was building a gap, up to just 2.3 seconds on Verstappen. Leclerc was consistently at or within a second of Verstappen but at no point was he threatening the position. Leclerc did however up his pace slightly after Hamilton's message and successive overtake attempts.
At the end of that lap there was the first regular stops with the Alpines and Racing Bulls among the first to switch medium to hard tyres. The two Racing Bulls thereby ended up in a tight battle with each other after they both returned to the track only just ahead of Gasly who had pitted a lap before Lindblad and two laps before Lawson.
Verstappen then pitted at the end of lap 17 with Antonelli doing so a lap later to cover off the Red Bull. That put Antonelli down to 5th with Verstappen 2.5 seconds behind him. Ahead of them are the Ferraris and the closely matched McLarens with Piastri clearly having lost some performance in that collision with Leclerc.
On lap 20 there was a VSC to clear some debris off track. It was perfectly timed for Ferrari which called both cars in immediately. For Leclerc this meant he came out of the pitlane ahead of Antonelli while Hamilton could limit the damage of serving his 5s penalty. Hamilton's stop, once it was actually a tyre change popped more surprise as one of the mechanics hadn't been fully away from the car when the lollipop went green. The mechanic was thrown away, Hamilton briefly stopped again, but soon got going again with news later that the mechanic was fine. Bad news moments after that though as Hamilton reported understeer, learning that the team hadn't added front downforce on the stop as he had requested.
Up in front, Norris was now leading, a few tenths ahead of Leclerc. The Ferrari driver was of course enjoying much fresher tyres and easily got ahead at Kemmel on lap 23. At the same time Antonelli did the fastest lap thus far and was within a second of Norris by the end of that lap.
Antonelli needs three more laps to clear Norris so when he finally did pass, Leclerc had already pulling a 3 second advantage. Antonelli still seemed to have an advantage and started cutting into that advantage by 3 to 4 tenths a lap.
Norris pitted at the end of lap 30, switching to medium for the last 15 laps. Norris returned to the track in 8th position, quickly moving up to 7th by passing Bortoleto.
Up in front, the gap between the two front runners had crumbled down to less than a second by the start of lap 33. At the end of the next lap the gap was down to 0.5 seconds giving Antonelli his first chance to pass the Ferrari, one he used to perfection, steaming past Leclerc at Kemmel before Leclerc could even ponder about squeezing the Mercedes to the outside.
That was fastest lap for Antonelli but it wasn't enough to quickly shake Leclerc off. The Ferrari driver, partly thanks to overtake mode, was able to stay close and even after consistently losing time at La Source come back closer again towards the end of Kemmel Straight.
While Leclerc dropped out of the one-second window on lap 39, Hamilton got without touching distance of Piastri in the fight for fourth place. Hamilton needed one extra lap before a perfectly setup overtake after coming very close at Busstop and La Source before taking his chance and fly past. Piastri though was quickly encouraged and informed that Hamilton was set for a post-race investigation for an unsafe release.
So, in the end, the favourite won, but he had to work hard for it after Leclerc sneaked past in the VSC period. Antonelli of course makes a huge step in the championship as well thanks to Russell's retirement.
Fernando Alonso meanwhile finished his race with some burnouts, underlining his frustration of trundling around in the back, being lapped twice in today's Belgian Grand Prix. Aston Martin's update for the next Grand Prix is expected to bring near 2 seconds improvement with the team hoping they will be in the midfield again, rather than guaranteed to be at the rear.
