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.”
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.
