Formula One champion Max Verstappen won a “cat and mouse” Belgian Grand Prix sprint on Saturday in Red Bull’s first race under the leadership of Laurent Mekies following Christian Horner’s dismissal.
McLaren’s championship leader Oscar Piastri finished second, after taking a dominant pole position for the 100km race, with the Australian increasing his advantage over team-mate Lando Norris to nine points.
Norris ended up where he started, in third place on a bright afternoon at the longest and second fastest track on the calendar.
Charles Leclerc was fourth for Ferrari with Haas’s Esteban Ocon fifth and Carlos Sainz sixth for Williams. Haas’s Oliver Bearman and Racing Bulls’ Isack Hadjar completed the scoring positions.
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“Well done Max. Very, very impressive defence, very well controlled. You didn’t leave anything on the table there,” Mekies told Verstappen over the team radio after the Dutch driver took the chequered flag.
Verstappen, starting second, used straight-line speed to slipstream into the lead at Les Combes on lap one and held off Piastri for the remaining 14, with the Australian 0.753 seconds behind at the flag.
The win was Verstappen’s first, in either a sprint or grand prix, since Imola in May and it was knife-edge all the way.
“I knew of course it was going to be very tough to keep them behind. So it’s just playing like cat and mouse, DRS, battery usage,” he said as the large contingent of Dutch fans celebrated.
“The whole race was within seven tenths, so I couldn’t afford to make big mistakes. I had one tiny lock-up in the last corner, but apart from that it was, for us, a great result to keep them behind.
“You have to drive over the limit of what’s possible. Tyre management goes out of the window. I did 15 qualifying laps to keep them behind on a track where tyre management is important.”
Piastri had few real chances – close enough to hope but too far to make a move stick.
“I tried my best to snake my way through the straights and not give too much of a tow but didn’t have enough straight-line speed and then obviously didn’t have enough speed for the next 15 laps either,” he said.
“It is only a sprint, the main points are tomorrow, so pretty happy with it but a bit frustrated I couldn’t get past.”
Norris was a further 0.661 adrift after losing third place to Leclerc on lap one and taking it back a few laps later.
“I wasn’t going to get past anyone unless Oscar got past Max. They drove good races,” said the Briton. “I was hoping for a bit of battling but the Red Bull was too quick in the straight for us to catch up.”
The sprint was a disappointment for Mercedes, with George Russell 12th and Kimi Antonelli 17th.
Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton also had a tough time, last year’s grand prix winner with Mercedes finishing a distant 15th after starting 18th.
Neither of the Alpines were on the grid, with Franco Colapinto starting from the pit lane and Pierre Gasly entering the race two laps late after a water leak had to be fixed.
Norris later secured pole position for Sunday’s Grand Prix in his bid to seal a hat-trick of consecutive victories after beating Piastri to top spot.
Leclerc took third for Ferrari but team-mate Hamilton’s weekend took another nightmare twist after he qualified only 16th.
Verstappen was fourth, one position clear of Williams’ Alex Albon, with George Russell sixth for Mercedes.
Norris delivered with his first lap of Q3 to hold a near two-tenth advantage over Piastri heading into the concluding runs and – although he failed to improve, and Piastri did – it was enough to take first place as he looks to build on his wins in Austria and Silverstone.
Norris qualified six tenths behind Piastri in Friday’s qualifying and he said: “Everyone was quite worried after yesterday. But I was always confident, so it is nice to get back on top.
“The car has been flying all weekend and Oscar and I have been pushing each other a lot. You can see each other’s strengths and weaknesses [on the shared team data] so that makes it a tough battle.”
Rain is forecast for Sunday’s 44-lap race, and Norris continued: “I prefer it to stay dry. But I don’t mind if it is wet, or dry, or somewhere in the middle. I just hope it is an exciting race.”
Hamilton was eliminated in Q1 for Sunday’s main event after his best lap was chalked off by the stewards.
The Briton thought he had done enough to haul his Ferrari into the next phase of qualifying when he posted the seventh best time. But moments later, his lap was deleted after he was adjudged to have run all four wheels of his Ferrari off the circuit at Raidillon. That dropped him way down the order.
“Is everything okay?” Hamilton asked on the radio. “Track limits,” replied Hamilton’s race engineer Ricardo Adami.
“Am I out?” Hamilton replied. “Lap time is deleted, P16,” came the response.
There was no response from the 40-year-old who is left to reflect on another sobering result of his difficult start to life at Ferrari.
Hamilton, who spun in qualifying for the sprint, enters Sunday’s race without a podium for Ferrari – the deepest he has gone into a season in his career without a top-three finish.
Hamilton’s replacement at Mercedes, Kimi Antonelli, also failed to emerge from Q1 and will start 18th, with both Aston Martins on the final row of the grid following a dismal qualifying session for the British team. Fernando Alonso will line up from 19th, with team-mate Lance Stroll 20th and last.
Ollie Bearman finished an impressive seventh in the sprint, but then qualified 12th as he complained the start of his final lap was compromised by Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda.
