Sprint in Spa: Verstappen doesn't stop, but a great Piastri is second!

(Cover picture: Pirelli Motorsport)

The monotony that seems to surround Formula 1 these days, hostage to Max Verstappen's streak of victories, hides reasons for interest that the Dutchman himself gifts us every time he takes to the track.

In the wet Spa where the Sprint took place, the World Champion showed us an overtaking move on Oscar Piastri whose preparation is already a classic: coming out of the Source corner (Turn 1), he slips behind the Australian and keeps the right foot completely flat out for the entire Eau Rouge - Raidillon section... All this at a close distance from Oscar, and on a still wet asphalt at the time. Simply fearless.

Ok, but how did we get to that point?

After the delayed start, chaos in the pits and the Sprint interrupted by the Safety Car

As expected by the weather forecast, the rain timely arrived on the circuit in the Ardennes, forcing the Race Direction to postpone the start by 30 minutes. In addition to this, it was decided to opt for the rolling start procedure after 4 laps behind the Safety Car, in an attempt to "artificially" dry the track.

Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

As if that wasn't enough, in order to guarantee - on paper - a higher level of safety, it was decided to start on Full Wet tyres, which are able to dissipate more water than the Intermediate tyres. In hindsight, it turned out to be a rather unsafe choice, because the little water remaining on the track "forced" the teams to come into the pits all together, thus fitting the Intermediate tyres.

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Running the risk of losing a lot of time in case of double stacking - i.e. each team bringing both drivers into the pits, each team opted to box one driver and keep the other on track on Full Wet. However, the latter group, by changing their tyres a lap too late, paid dearly in terms of laptime for this choice, and found themselves forced to a comeback.

Among them we find - surprisingly - Max Verstappen, given that the Red Bull pitwall had opted to immediately bring Perez in, and only after one lap his teammate. Finding himself behind the new Sprint leader Oscar Piastri, we understand why the Dutchman had to plan the move we described above.

"The choice of the pit stop on the second lap was safe. I could have come in earlier and maybe find myself behind other cars or even behind the Safety Car, losing a lot of time. As soon as we put the Intermediates on, we were flying, so it went well. Tomorrow, however, I'll have to overtake a few cars, and the biggest risks could be in turns 1 and 2. They are always very tricky situations, but if we stay out of trouble we believe the car is good"

Max Verstappen

In any case, once the Piastri case was closed, Max opened a gap of about 1 second per lap and went on to win easily ahead of the McLaren's Australian driver (who will now want to taste the podium in the main race after this Sprint).

On the fourth of the eleven scheduled laps, in the rear we witnessed a rare mistake by Fernando Alonso, who lost the rear end of his Aston Martin in the very fast left-hand corner of Pouhon, while closely following Nico Hulkenberg.

A rare mistake, as mentioned, but which doesn't lead to particularly serious consequences: there was practically no contact with the barriers thanks to the braking action of the gravel trap after two 360° spins, and also in terms of points, Fernando was destined anyway not to take some home. In short, all in all, the Spaniard gets away with... a birthday to forget!

Pierre Gasly clinches third position, behind him contact between Perez and Hamilton!

Among those who benefitted most from the early pit stop for the switch from Full Wet to Intermediates there's certainly Pierre Gasly, who thus overtook Sainz, Perez and Norris... From that moment on, however, the luck was over, and the task of defending the podium position was entirely into his hands.

Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

No problem for Pierre, who made good use of his Alpine's high top speed to defend his position first from Perez, and then from Hamilton. Speaking of the two Red Bull and Mercedes drivers, on lap 7 out of 11 the two were the protagonists of a contact (slight, it must be said) which effectively put an end to the Mexican's race...

The FIA stewards considered the Mercedes driver responsible for the contact, punishing him with a 5-second penalty which - in the absence of further pit stops - was added to Lewis's race time. Because of this, the fourth position conquered on track turned into a P7 by a hair's breadth ahead of his teammate Russell, author of a disappointing Sprint today.

"It seems to me that it was a racing accident, and on top of that in difficult track conditions... I was more than alongside him, but in the end it was bad luck. I finished fourth, weel seventh with the penalty, but still you don't get many points in these Sprints. Now we'll try to sort out the car for tomorrow, and hope for a better race"

Lewis Hamilton

Personally, I don't agree with the penalty inflicted to the 7-times World Champion: he and Perez drove around Turn 15 completely side by side, and the presence of the Mexican's RB19 disturbed the aerodynamics of the Englishman's W14 just enough to cause understeer, which sent him into his opponent's right sidepod. Of course, you may object that an experienced driver like Lewis knows what to expect in these cases, but it's also true that the he was still in control of the situation, so much so that after the slight impact he was able to continue his Sprint.

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

The impression is that the stewards decided to punish the consequence more than the intention, since the gash in the right side of Perez's car forced him to retire. As happened to Verstappen's twin RB19 in the Sprint at Baku (ironically, there too the collision was against a Mercedes, on that occasion the number 63 of Russell), the opening created in the sidepods determined an area of strong infiltrations for the airflow that would normally go towards the diffuser.

"The collision meant that my race ended there... Now I can't wait for the Grand Prix tomorrow, hoping that tomorrow we can make up for the points we lost today"

Sergio Perez

The amount of downforce missing was visible in the two laps in which Checo tried to stay on track despite the damage: in pretty much every corner he suffered from terrible understeer, almost like he was driving on ice. Gradually this meant that the pack passed him, and in fact - as already mentioned - Red Bull number 11 was retired.

How to analyze the Sprint of the two Ferraris? Could they do more?

The 11 laps of the Sprint of Sainz (in P4) and Leclerc (in P5) didn't give us many twists, mainly because both remained behind the slower Alpine of Gasly until the checkered flag. But even without this obstacle, it can be said that the two couldn't have done much more: apart from Verstappen, Piastri also had more pace in hand today.

"Unfortunately, the pit stops compromised this race. Carlos was already in front and had the priority to choose whether to pit, so I was a bit at the mercy of this. I did one more lap on the Full Wet tyres, which wasn't the optimal solution at that moment, but we couldn't do anything else. Unfortunately, we also had a problem at the pit stop, although I haven't figured out what happened yet, and this made us lose 2 or 3 positions. Tomorrow it's hard to imagine what will happen, because here when you expect dry weather it rains, and vice versa!"

Charles Leclerc

The only jolt was in the first laps, when the Ferrari pitwall decided (as planned in these cases) to bring Sainz into the pits first, and Leclerc the following lap. If the choices made by the strategists of the Prancing Horse team often lend themselves to controversy, in this case I feel like saying - as much as Charles did - that there are no elements to think about some kind of favoritism or strategic errors.

What can we expect from tomorrow's race?

Apart from what the weather holds in store for us, it's reasonable to expect a totally different race dynamic from the Sprint we have just analyzed: the latter was literally plagued by the interruptions, of course, but there's also a factor usually very relevant at Spa, which wasn't talked about much today... I'm referring to tyre degradation, a variable that can mark the difference between hitting the podium or finishing the race on the edge of the points paying positions.

Michael Potts / Motorsport Images

I don't deliberately talk about the race win but only about the podium because, as you will have understood by now, P1 seems reserved for that guy with the number 1 on his car's nose who has decided to rewrite every record in the category.

Waiting to be proven wrong (!), see you on Monday on these pages for our usual "signature" race analysis, while I remind you that you can also find Race Analysis on the social pages of Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. Enjoy the race!

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