The Belgian Grand Prix will remain on the Formula 1 calendar until 2025 after signing a one-year contract extension. The race at Spa-Francorchamps has faced an uncertain future for a number of years and still lacks a long-term deal, but has made …
The Belgian Grand Prix will remain on the Formula 1 calendar until 2025 after signing a one-year contract extension.
The race at Spa-Francorchamps has faced an uncertain future for a number of years and still lacks a long-term deal, but has made recent investments in infrastructure and changes to the track for safety purposes. F1 CEO Stefano Domencali suggests more focus on the track itself is required for a further extension but welcomed the work done so far.
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“Spa is synonymous with Formula 1 having been one of the circuits in our first ever season and is much-loved by fans and drivers alike, so I am delighted to extend our relationship with them until 2025,” Domenicali said.
“The promoter has taken big strides in the last few years to improve the fan experience and infrastructure, and work is ongoing between all the stakeholders with a clear focus on delivering safe and exciting racing. I would like to thank the promoter and the Government of Wallonia for their continued support.”
Willy Borsus, the vice-president and minister for the economy of Wallonia, says the race has been finding ways of being impactful for the local region despite reducing the amount of public money that is invested.
“We are proud and excited to announce that the Formula 1 Grand Prix will take place in Wallonia in 2025,” Borsus added. Our region will once again rise to the top of the international scene, thanks to its high-quality events and legendary sports infrastructure.
“Beyond the prestige, I would like to emphasize the considerable economic impact that this event brings to Wallonia and Belgium. According to a study carried out in 2021, the grand prix generates positive spin-offs of €41.8 million ($43.9m) for our region, after deduction of public funding, which is steadily decreasing.
“These figures constitute a solid indication of the financial impact, and the positive outlook means that we can expect even more positive results this year. The Formula 1 Grand Prix thus embodies both an emblematic moment in motor sport and a powerful engine of economic growth for our region.”
Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur says the inconsistent results of so many midfield teams in Formula 1 this year are a function of how tight the 2023 grid is – and so those teams need to be cautious about overreacting to each race result …
Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur says the inconsistent results of so many midfield teams in Formula 1 this year are a function of how tight the 2023 grid is — and so those teams need to be cautious about overreacting to each race result individually.
In the Belgian Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc started from pole position — up from second in qualifying thanks to Max Verstappen’s grid penalty — and executed a strong race to hold off Lewis Hamilton for third place behind the two Red Bulls. Having finished seventh and eighth in Hungary and ninth and 10th at Silverstone, Vasseur says he’s not going to let the Spa result be overstated.
“I will stay very calm, because we had the same meeting one week ago and we were at the end of the world because McLaren was flying and we were stupid, and from one week to the other McLaren is at the back and we are at the front,” Vasseur said. “We have to take it easy race after race — we know that the pack is so tight that for one or two things, you can move from P2 to P11.
“It’s not the end of the season, we have a lot to do. But for sure it’s good to finish the first part of the season on the positive tone, at least we will have two weeks off with a positive race in mind.”
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Although he wants to ensure Ferrari does not get carried away with the podium finish, where Vasseur will take confidence is in how well the team responded to such challenging weather throughout the three days in Belgium.
“For sure, I’m happy that we did a strong weekend in every single condition — wet, slicks, long stints, short stints — that we were always there is good for us. Now we have to understand why we are more comfortable on some tracks than some others.
“But I think everybody is in the same situation — we are all a bit inconsistent. Because you have one or two tenths between P2 and P11, it means that the characteristic of tire management or level of downforce that you choose at the beginning of the weekend means — if you get it right — you can do a very strong one and we don’t have to draw any definitive conclusions.
“I think it will be like this until the end of the season and we have to be more consistent, to understand where we are weak, why we are weak and to try to minimize that kind of weekend.”
All Formula 1 teams not named Red Bull may be winless in 2023 to date, but ABC/ESPN continued to enjoy a variety of firsts in U.S. TV audience for the sport during the first half of the season. ESPN reports that last weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix …
All Formula 1 teams not named Red Bull may be winless in 2023 to date, but ABC/ESPN continued to enjoy a variety of firsts in U.S. TV audience for the sport during the first half of the season.
ESPN reports that last weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix featured the largest U.S. television audience average on record for the event at 1.17 million viewers, up 12 percent over 2022. It also featured 492,000 average viewers in the 18-49 age bracket, making it Sunday’s most-viewed program in that demo on ESPN platforms.
Saturday’s sprint on ESPN2 also drew strongly with 555,000 viewers, while 405K watched Friday’s qualifying session on ESPN2.
Through the opening 12 races, the 2023 F1 season is averaging 1.24 million viewers per race across ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC. That average is slightly higher than the overall season average for 2022 of 1.21m, which was the highest ever for F1 in the United States.
The 2023 season has had three of F1’s four largest live audiences in history on U.S. television — the inaugural Miami GP in 2022 remains the largest at 2.6 million but this year’s races at Miami (1.96m), Monaco (1.79m) and Canada (1.76m) are now the second, third and fourth spots on the all-time list for live telecast audiences.
All but two of the races this year have averaged more than 1 million viewers. The outliers are Australia, which aired in the overnight hours and averaged 556K, and Azerbaijan, at 959K.
While recent developments have improved Mercedes’ competitive posture in Formula 1, they may also have played a part in the return of the porpoising problems that troubled the team so much last year, based on drivers’ feedback during the Belgian …
While recent developments have improved Mercedes’ competitive posture in Formula 1, they may also have played a part in the return of the porpoising problems that troubled the team so much last year, based on drivers’ feedback during the Belgian Grand Prix.
The race weekend at Spa-Francorchamps was mainly wet but throughout the three days there were signs that the Mercedes in particular was suffering from porpoising — or bouncing — at high speed. The drivers referenced it after sessions and the team’s chief technical officer Mike Elliott says work will take place to work out whether it was track-specific or a result of the recent upgrades.
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“We definitely had an amount of bouncing this weekend — both drivers were telling us that and we could see it in the data,” Elliott said. “We could also see an amount of bouncing on the other cars and I think some of it is the nature of the circuit at Spa. In fact we had huge amounts of bouncing last year, as did most teams.
“It definitely affects the performance of the cars because it affects the drivers’ ability to extract the maximum grip from the car, it affects their balance and it affects their ability to get their braking points right. So that is something we will be working on for the future.
“The question we need to ask ourselves is, how much of it is just the circuit we were at in Spa and how much is to be found in setup. Because obviously it was a weekend where we had no dry running up until the point we were actually racing. We will take a really good look at the upgrade kit and make sure that we’ve not introduced bouncing with that but at the moment our belief is it is probably a result of setup or the circuit itself.”
Russell and Hamilton unusually opened for different rear wings at Spa and while Hamilton proved faster, proposing problems affected them both. Steven Tee/Motorsport Images
Elliott also noted the weather conditions throughout the weekend led to the two drivers opting for different rear wings, with George Russell struggling to match Lewis Hamilton in every session.
“Like every race weekend, we go in by doing an amount of work in the simulator to try and get the general balance requirements of the car right, work out what downforce level we want to run, work out where we are going to place our mechanical balance, our aero balance, just to get ourselves roughly in the right window,” he explained. “So the two drivers did that program before the Spa race weekend — in George’s case he felt that the bigger rear wing gave him some options. He preferred the balance of the car driving with that, so he elected to start the race weekend with that. Normally what happens is the two drivers come together over the race weekend but obviously this weekend was pretty wet, there was no dry running and both of them quite liked the car they’d got so elected to stay where they were.”
Max Verstappen can be so relaxed about the run of dominance he is currently on that “he’s having a smoke and a pancake”, says Lewis Hamilton after the Belgian Grand Prix. Spa-Francorchamps saw Verstappen ease to victory in both the Sprint and …
Max Verstappen can be so relaxed about the run of dominance he is currently on that “he’s having a smoke and a pancake”, says Lewis Hamilton after the Belgian Grand Prix.
Spa-Francorchamps saw Verstappen ease to victory in both the Sprint and Sunday’s main race, extending his unbeaten spell to eight races. After the Dutchman even made a light-hearted suggestion to make an extra pit stop during the grand prix to provide “practice” for his Red Bull team, it was suggested to Hamilton that it might be too easy for Verstappen, with the seven-time world champion referencing the laidback Dutch character in Austin Powers’ Goldmember.
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“What do you want me to say?! I haven’t spoken to him…” Hamilton said. “He’s having a smoke and a pancake!”
It wasn’t just Verstappen who was out of reach for Hamilton on Sunday, with Charles Leclerc also able to keep the Mercedes driver at bay for the final spot on the podium.
“It always felt like he had an answer for all the laps I did. They had the upper hand this weekend, I was trying, I was pushing a lot, had a lot of deg – particularly in the middle sector – but still got fastest lap at the end, there’s lots of positives to take from this weekend. We’ve got work to do naturally, as always.”
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff agrees with Hamilton that Verstappen has the ability to joke around during races such is his advantage, but says it’s a position that has been earned.
“He has all the reasons to be a little bit cheeky,” Wolff said. “He’s just driving circles around everybody else on merit. There’s nothing else to say about that. We’ve got to watch that, and as much as that is annoying, that’s just above the lot.
“I think when you compare to the rest, Spa was an awful race (in the past) and before the last stop (Sergio) Perez, Leclerc and us were within six or eight seconds, and that is a major step for us because Spa was a disaster in 2022. We feel we’ve made that step, but then you’ve got that top guy who made another step in advance. It’s a fact, and we’ve got to turn around the facts.”
Charles Leclerc says there are both positive and negative aspects to his third-place result at the Belgian Grand Prix, having finished over half a minute behind race winner Max Verstappen. Championship leader Verstappen had been quickest in …
Charles Leclerc says there are both positive and negative aspects to his third-place result at the Belgian Grand Prix, having finished over half a minute behind race winner Max Verstappen.
Championship leader Verstappen had been quickest in qualifying but a grid penalty for a gearbox change saw him start sixth, with Leclerc on pole. Although Sergio Perez took the lead on the opening lap, Leclerc looked comfortable as he held onto third once Verstappen also came through, praising Ferrari’s execution but admitting the gap to Red Bull remains daunting.
“This was the best we could achieve today, no doubt,” Leclerc said. “So yeah, you always hope to try to win the race, but on the other hand, realistically, we knew that both of the Red Bulls would be much quicker. But our target was to maximize the points with the package we had and honestly, I don’t think we could have done anything better today.
“We’ve had quite a positive weekend on our side in terms of pace. Of course, the race went well on my side, but a shame for Carlos (who retired following his opening-lap collision with Oscar Piastri), as I think we had good pace. So that is good. When you look at the Red Bull, we still have a lot of work to do, especially in terms of race pace, because degradation and everything they are quite far ahead still.”
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One area that often comes under scrutiny at Ferrari is strategy but Leclerc says the way the team managed the threat from Lewis Hamilton throughout the race was faultless.
“Basically, we had to react to what Lewis was doing behind, which then the Red Bull had to react to us a lap later. That’s why we were all on the same strategy, because everybody was reacting to somebody else’s strategy. Our strategy was based on Lewis and trying to keep him behind during the whole race. He had a good pace but I felt we had him under control.”
As the final stint was unfolding, Leclerc was within four seconds of Perez in the fight for second but says “a bit too much” fuel saving prevented him from mounting a challenge.
“When Checo started to push again for a few laps at the end, I could not match that, so I think they also had a bit of margin. But at one point I was seeing that I was doing the same lap times as Checo, I didn’t know how much he was saving but I knew how much I was saving, so I thought, ‘OK, maybe we can get second place’ — but then very quickly I understood that he was just saving.”
Max Verstappen admits Eau Rouge provided the biggest scare on his way to another comfortable victory in the Belgian Grand Prix. Starting from sixth on the grid, Verstappen had made his way into the lead on lap 17 and was easing towards his eighth …
Max Verstappen admits Eau Rouge provided the biggest scare on his way to another comfortable victory in the Belgian Grand Prix.
Starting from sixth on the grid, Verstappen had made his way into the lead on lap 17 and was easing towards his eighth consecutive victory when rain hit the circuit around the halfway mark. The shower was brief so drivers stayed on slick tires and Verstappen had a moment as he climbed Eau Rouge, telling his team via radio “**** I nearly lost it” after gathering the car.
“Yeah, that’s probably not the best place to go sideways but luckily nothing happened,” Verstappen said. “Of course, with the new changes through there, you have a little bit more run-off, but it’s still not a nice corner to have a moment.
“The rain was just moving around on the track. Sometimes it was just increasing in other places, from lap to lap, so I just got up there and it probably rained a bit harder [at Eau Rouge] when I was on the other side of the track. I got there and it just caught me out. It was just a bit more slippery than I thought it would be.
“It happens. You quickly try to correct it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Luckily, at that speed as well, you have quite a bit of downforce on the car. That helps [but] it was not great.”
While his response on team radio betrayed how surprised Verstappen had been, the Dutchman was also getting air time for his general discussions with race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase, but admits not all of their interactions were serious.
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“Probably 50-50 [joking] in the messages. I know that the team doesn’t like to do another stop but I like to mention it so they might get a bit nervous. And then I like the response: ‘No, no, we’re not doing that today.’ It’s fine. We know each other very well and we have a very good relationship.”
Verstappen’s team principal Christian Horner also had a sense of humor post-race as he pointed out how the Dutchman took the lead at the same venue at an earlier stage a year ago when he started 14th.
“I’m surprised it took him so long to get to the front, to be honest with you!” Horner said. “No, honestly, all jokes aside, I thought he drove an incredible race today. His pace obviously in the first stint, passing the cars that he did, he did a great job to get up to P2, and then after the stop, his race really came alive on the medium tire. I thought he showed incredible speed.
“Checo [Perez] obviously didn’t defend too hard because of the speed difference between the two of them, and thereafter it was about managing the rest of the race. Phenomenal to go into the summer break unbeaten in both grands prix and sprints. I think it’s beyond everybody’s wildest imagination to be sitting in this position now.”
Carlos Sainz says Oscar Piastri was “optimistic” with the move he was attempting on the opening lap of the Belgian Grand Prix as both drivers ultimately retired due to contact. Piastri was on the inside of Sainz who had moved to overtake Lewis …
Carlos Sainz says Oscar Piastri was “optimistic” with the move he was attempting on the opening lap of the Belgian Grand Prix as both drivers ultimately retired due to contact.
Piastri was on the inside of Sainz who had moved to overtake Lewis Hamilton, and the three cars were squeezed at the first corner, leaving Piastri to make contact with both Sainz and the inside wall as the gap closed. Sainz limped on with heavy damage in the hope of a red flag until rain cleared and his car was retired, and the Ferrari driver suggests a lack of experience at Spa led to Piastri triggering the incident.
“I think I was on the attack with Lewis and pretty much had the move down into Turn 1, made the apex cleanly, but unfortunately Oscar was trying to do a bit of an optimistic move on me I think,” Sainz said.
“A bit of a shame because when you review the past races here in Spa and you know what has been a typical Turn 1 incident it’s exactly that — everyone who tries the inside line in Turn 1 and tries to make it around there normally generates an incident or a crash and this time it was my turn to receive.
“At some point someone needs to back out and it’s the guy who’s alongside my rear right I think who needs to back off, not me and let him pass me into Turn 1 — especially when I’m pretty much having my move done on Lewis.”
Piastri felt there was no clear blame on either side but pointed to Sainz moving late just before the braking zone as the catalyst eventually leading to the space running out when he could no longer react.
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“I think it’s quite firmly in the category of a lap one, Turn 1 incident,” Piastri said. “I got a good start, got my nose alongside. When we got to the braking zone, Carlos moved to the right and locked up. I also had to try and avoid that a bit, and then from there to the apex my options were quite limited in where I can go.
“I’ll look back over it and see if there’s more I could have done but it’s a shame we’re standing here and not on track.
“I think looking back on it, we both could have done things a bit differently … It’s a very tight Turn 1. Carlos also didn’t have many options from where Lewis was either. A shame…”
While Sainz wanted Piastri to back out of the move, the Australian rookie says there wasn’t enough time or space for him to do so that close to the corner.
“I think, from Carlos’ point of view, the move to the right surprised me a bit. From there I was quite limited. Maybe I could have [braked] later and been more alongside, but it’s very easy to say that with hindsight. I think once I was in that position it was quite hard to go forward or go backwards and I was kind of stuck; I tried to do the best I could from that position.”
The collision left Piastri crawling through Eau Rouge at low speed and he admits it was a nerve-wracking moment that he had to deal with.
“I think I had a left front puncture, think the right front was broken as well, going up Eau Rouge with about 180 degrees of front lock and still going straight… So something was clearly broken.
“It wasn’t fun, that’s for sure. I think I was quite lucky that everyone got around me before Eau Rouge. Then, the way the steering was, I kind of managed to get to the left side of the track before the bottom of Eau Rouge, so from that point it was OK, but it’s not very fun going around a slightly curved straight when you couldn’t steer.”
Max Verstappen claimed a comfortable victory from sixth on the grid at the Belgian Grand Prix ahead of Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez. Perez had started from the front row and snatched the lead from polesitter Charles Leclerc at the end of the …
Max Verstappen claimed a comfortable victory from sixth on the grid at the Belgian Grand Prix ahead of Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez.
Perez had started from the front row and snatched the lead from polesitter Charles Leclerc at the end of the Kemmel straight on the first lap control the race early on. But Verstappen was already up to fourth by then, behind Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, and the Dutchman was targeting the top step.
The championship leader bided his time to make his moves. On lap 6 he snatched third from Hamilton at the end of the Kemmel straight, and on three laps later he mugged Leclerc on the brakes to take second place around the outside of Les Combes.
The gap to the lead stood at 2.7s, but with so little understood about the tires at the end of a rain-disrupted weekend, both Red Bull drivers entered management mode to ensure their softs could make it to the first pit stop window.
Perez was the first to make a change, switching to mediums on lap 13. Verstappen followed him on the following tour, his deficit shrinking to 2.2s thanks to a faster stop.
Freshly booted, Verstappen was in hot pursuit. On lap 16 he fired his warning shot, taking more than a second out of his teammate’s lead in the middle sector alone. On the following lap he pounced, getting a far better exit out of La Source to take the lead partway down Kemmel.
Verstappen gently but inexorably stretched the gap to ensure he’d never relinquish top spot, eventually taking the flag with a comfortable 22.305s.
“I knew that we had a great car,” he said. “It was just about surviving Turn 1. From there onwards we all made the right overtaking moves.”
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Perez offered a limited defense of the lead but had more than enough pace to consolidate second place, confirming Red Bull Racing’s first one-two finish since the Miami Grand Prix in May.
“It was a good race for the team,” he said. “I was just doing my own race, then Max came through in the second stint pretty fast, so nothing I could’ve done there.
“Afterwards it was just about making sure we could bring it home safely without damaging the car.”
Leclerc took his third podium of the year with relative ease in third, covering two Hamilton undercut attempts to cruise to an unchallenged rostrum appearance.
“We’ve had quite a positive weekend on our side in terms of pace,” he said. “The race went good on my side.
“We had good pace, so that is good. When you look at the Red Bull, we still have a lot of work to do, especially on race pace, because on degradation and everything they’re quite far ahead still.”
Carlos Sainz and Oscar Piastri collide at the start. Steven Tee/Motorsport Images
Hamilton consoled himself for the lost podium with a penultimate-lap stop to snatch the bonus point for fastest lap. There had been a significant gap behind Hamilton before his stop thanks to the formation of a DRS train behind Fernando Alonso and then Lance Stroll early in the race.
Alonso secured the place with a long middle stint on the medium tire that protected against an early undercut but also gave him a short run on the soft tire to close the race. The strategy kept him ahead of George Russell, who was one of three drivers to make just one pit stop.
Lando Norris rescued a disastrous race start to return reasonably points for McLaren in seventh.
The Briton plummeted out of the points with embarrassing speed in the first five laps before deciding to abandon his opening set of mediums for a set of hards. But his second stop, just 12 laps later for a set of softs, was a masterstroke of timing. Light rain had begun to sprinkle the track, and Norris used the fresh, blanket-warmed rubber to make up considerable ground that delivered him back into the points for seventh place.
Esteban Ocon pursued Norris late with fresher rubber but ran out of laps, taking eighth after some entertaining duels with Lance Stroll and Yuki Tsunoda, who completed the points in ninth and 10th.
Pierre Gasly’s one-stop race left him pointless in 11th ahead of Alfa Romeo teammates Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu.
Kevin Magnussen finished 14th ahead of Alex Albon, Daniel Ricciardo, Nico Hulkenberg and Logan Sargeant.
Carlos Sainz and Oscar Piastri were the afternoon’s only retirements after colliding on the first lap, the Ferrari driver pinning the McLaren against the wall on the La Source hairpin. Piastri ground to a halt later on in the lap, while Sainz limped on with sidepod and floor damage before being recalled to pit lane to retire on lap 25.
Sergio Perez says the collision with Lewis Hamilton caused “massive damage” to his car that led to his retirement from the Sprint at the Belgian Grand Prix, but the Mercedes driver feels the penalty he received for it was harsh. Hamilton was trying …
Sergio Perez says the collision with Lewis Hamilton caused “massive damage” to his car that led to his retirement from the Sprint at the Belgian Grand Prix, but the Mercedes driver feels the penalty he received for it was harsh.
Hamilton was trying to overtake Perez on the inside having got a run out of Stavelot in wet conditions, but the pair touched through the following right-hander and the Red Bull stayed ahead at the time. The contact saw Perez suffer damage that cost him significant performance and as he dropped through the field the team opted to retire his car, with Hamilton getting a five-second time penalty for the incident.
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“Yeah, it was massive damage from the contact from Lewis,” Perez said. “He just took out the whole right-hand side of the car. He damaged the floor and sidepod so that was game over — we lost too much grip with it.
“Basically he ran out of grip and could not stop his car and just went into the side of me and damaged my floor and that was very unfortunate.
“I think he was in a bit of a hurry. Everyone was in a hurry to recover today — it’s a very short race and you need to take that level of risk. But not nice to get my race ruined by him.”
However, Hamilton felt the collision didn’t warrant punishment and referenced Ayrton Senna when stating he felt he was in a position to try and make the move stick.
“Not really much to say — racing incident I think,” Hamilton said. “I tried to go up the inside … I mean my only thought is it’s tricky conditions out there, we’re all trying our best, and of course it wasn’t intentional.
“I think I went for a gap, he was slow going through (Turn) 14, I went up the inside, I was more than half a car length on the inside, and if you no longer go for a gap you’re no longer a racing driver as Ayrton said, so that’s what I did. When I watched it back it felt like a racing incident to me.”
Although he didn’t agree with the penalty, Hamilton says he is less concerned about the lost points in a sprint event when he wasn’t in contention for victory, as he was demoted from fourth to seventh in the classification.
“In a race like today I honestly don’t really care too much, you don’t get too many points. Of course it would have been nice to have finished fourth but I don’t really care to finish fourth, I want to win. Fourth, seventh — doesn’t really make a difference.”
