In a wet-dry battle at Spa-Francorchamps, Oscar Piastri defeated Lando Norris, a teammate of McLaren and a title contender, to win the Belgian Grand Prix and increase his lead in the Drivers’ Championship to 16 points. The 44-lap race was delayed by about 80 minutes due to heavy rain before it started, but as soon as the race started on Lap 5, Piastri’s improved run on his teammate and polesitter around Eau Rouge was the decisive moment. The Australian’s run was so strong that he finished the pass along the Kemmel Straight far ahead of Les Combes’ braking zone and went on to manage an early-running advantage of about one second.
Piastri’s dominance era
The track position and the circuit’s significant drying caused Piastri to pit for the medium tires on Lap 12, forcing Norris to finish another lap. The Briton was nine seconds behind after he stopped for hard rubber on the next tour. Piastri kept a solid lead despite having to control his softer compound, which only shrank to 3.1s in the last few laps. However, a minor error by Norris at La Source on the penultimate lap caused the gap to widen to 3.4s at the chequered flag.
Charles Leclerc, who finished 20 seconds behind Piastri but managed to keep Saturday’s Sprint winner Max Verstappen at bay the entire time, was only 1.5 seconds away from another rostrum than the two title contenders. After passing Alex Albon early on, Mercedes’ George Russell had a lonely race for P5. In the second half of the race, Lewis Hamilton put relentless pressure on the Williams driver, who managed to finish sixth.
Hmailton’s struggle and DRS
After starting in pit lane, Hamilton had moved up 11 spots in his Ferrari and was among the first to swap from the intermediate tires at the crossover point, ultimately finishing in seventh place. Pierre Gasly’s Alpine took the last point available in P10 after leading a DRS train for the majority of the race, while Gabriel Bortoleto of Kick Sauber and Liam Lawson’s Racing Bulls finished eighth and ninth, respectively.
During the final stages, Yuki Tsunoda dropped two spots. The Mercedes, Aston Martin, and Williams drivers all started from pit lane, but the Red Bull driver finished ahead of Lance Stroll (Aston Martin), Esteban Ocon (Haas), Kimi Antonelli, Fernando Alonso, and Carlos Sainz.
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