The Saturday in F1 Belgian GP was weather-affected as Max Verstappen continued to rule despite the penalty, while Charles Leclerc surprised the pack.
The wet conditions only added to the drama on Saturday of F1 Belgian GP at Spa-Francorchamps, but it is anyhow expected for the grand prix in this region. Even though, Sunday is predicted to be dry, but one never knows with the weather situation.
Whether wet or dry, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen continued his fine run after ending up fastest in qualifying after reverting to the FP1 spec. He will have to start from 11th and claw his way back which he can do, but it is to be seen how quick and how much.
His teammate Sergio Perez surprised with his show in F1 qualifying after ending up third in the order to secure a front row start. He was pipped by another surprise lap from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who will start on pole for the third time in row at Spa-Francorchamps.
He is not sure if he can hang on to the place but he will try his best, while teammate Carlos Sainz was left confused by the lack of pace in qualifying when compared to his teammate’s performance. The places in between was filled up by the Mercedes and McLaren drivers.
While Lewis Hamilton felt a bit better after a floor change and was slightly surprised to start third with a real chance to be on the podium. Teammate George Russell reckoned they faltered slightly on the strategy side, but the qualifying result was expected.
Over at McLaren, they sacrificed their qualifying to have a better race trim. Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri dropped behind a Ferrari and Mercedes and are banking on recovery in dry conditions, as Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso was pleased with a Top 10 result while Lance Stroll reflected on his crash and tough qualifying.
Verstappen: “Yeah, it was a good day. Of course, yesterday we tried a few things with the car. I think we learned from that. And today we tried to put on the car what we thought was best. And I think, as you could see, we ran maybe also a little bit more downforce compared to some competitors. So naturally, of course, in the wet, probably it’s a little bit more stable and that can help, of course, around here. But overall, I think the laps were good in qualifying all the way from Q1 to Q3. I passed Q1 and Q2 only on one tyre set, so I think that was important because that gave me, of course, a better opportunity for Q3. Yeah, everything was working well, but, of course, today is not as important because tomorrow is going to be dry, it’s going to be warmer, and we need to be good on tyres and, of course, starting 10 places back. It is going to be, of course, a little bit more tricky. I don’t expect it, of course, to be like the last two years.
“Naturally, looking at the cars around us being quite quick. So, yeah, we’ll just try to move forward, try to fight Ferraris, Mercedes, and with a bit of luck, maybe the McLarens, but it all depends on our pace ourselves. Regarding the wing change, I felt a bit more confident and comfortable on the FP1 wing. So I hope that that is also going to be the case tomorrow. Tomorrow is a bit warmer as well, so naturally probably a bit more sliding. I just hope, yeah, that it’s better for me. But when you look at the McLaren, for example, they run a very skinny wing. Seems to work for them, but it didn’t really work for me yesterday. So yeah, bit of a different strategy also there. And I guess we’ll find out tomorrow how it will work out. I mean, I have to pass cars.
“The DRS effect is quite big around here, but at the end of the day, I think it’s more important just to be good on tyres around here. Because if you’re good on tyres, you can pass people. As for the race, survive lap one and just go from there. I mean, we also have a bit of a different tyre strategy to the other cars, so we have to wait and see how that will evolve in the race. But, yeah, we’ll see what we can do. I mean, I’m not as confident as I was the last two years around here in coming back to the front. I still see it more as a damage limitation race. That’s how it is. But at least today was the best possible we could do in terms of the starting position for tomorrow.”
Leclerc: “It was a good lap. As Max said, the rain picked up a little bit at the end of Q3, which maybe there was a bit more to find on the first part of Q3, but obviously anyway, P1 was out of reach for us today. It’s a lot better than what we expected coming into the weekend, and especially after yesterday, that was a very difficult day for the team once again. So yeah, the tricky conditions helped us today. Overall, yeah, I’m very surprised. And actually, even when I finished the lap, I didn’t feel like it was worth a second place. I mean, it was a good lap, a clean lap, and that’s what you need in those conditions. And I believe that especially when you get to Q3 in the last lap, everybody knows that this is the lap, and that pushes people to maybe do more mistakes.
“On my side, it was a clean lap, but not an incredible lap. So yeah, I’m very happy to be P2 but I definitely did not expect that. I think as a team today P5 will have been a bit of a good result and today we are P2 and tomorrow we will be starting on pole. So that’s a good thing. But as I said we don’t have any magical solution for the race pace and it will be a bit of a tricky day tomorrow. Today, it was fine. But obviously, in wet conditions, it’s always a little bit less of an issue. Yesterday, we struggled a bit more with it. But I don’t expect this to be an issue tomorrow during the race. So this is a positive. So yeah. But if it was a dry quali, I would have expected it to be a bit more of a struggle for us.”
Perez: “Not initially. We tried a lot of things. We kept throwing things at it. And it’s never ideal when you don’t have progression. And once again, today we threw at it a lot of things. I think we found a nicer window, a little bit similar in the direction of Hungary. But we were a lot happier with the car, so I think… Although, I mean it’s on Inter conditions but the balance in the medium high-speed was feeling positive, in the right direction. So let’s see tomorrow. I think tomorrow is going to be a very different day and let’s see where how much we are able to improve. I think yesterday McLaren looked very strong. But at the same time, we are not that far away. So we’ve done some changes in the direction of tomorrow. So we’ll see. I think after the first stint, we will have a good idea.”
Hamilton: “P3 tomorrow? Oh yeah, I hadn’t thought about his penalty. Yeah, generally a good session. I think we tried to predict the weather as best we could and tried to be out on the track at the right times. There’s a slight chance we could maybe fight for a podium. But I think it’s going to be really tough. We’ve got the McLarens behind and a quick Red Bull ahead, and another quick Red Bull that’s going to come through, and the Ferrari is also just there with us in performance. There’s no relief. It was a relief [to change the floor] because it was raining, and we were a second off yesterday, so maybe it would have been seven-tenths off but we wouldn’t have been fighting for the top three. The race pace is strong with the other guys. I’m hoping the changes we’ve made overnight maybe put us in a slightly better place, and it’s going to be how I drive it tomorrow that will really seal the deal or go backwards.”
Norris: “The whole weekend the Red Bull has been a step ahead of us even if we were a bit quicker yesterday. I just think Red Bull didn’t show their cards at all – and we did. What we did yesterday was pretty much all we got. I think going into today we were optimistic still. I was just struggling a bit myself. Oscar was almost quickest in the first two sessions. Q3, I think both just struggled a little bit more. Just from my side, I just haven’t been able to click very well today. I was always one step behind. I was always a little bit on the backfoot. To come away with a P5, I was actually surprised with and therefore happy with it. It’s not the result I wanted honestly.
“Still got to overtake some quick cars like the Red Bull of Perez. The slightly lower downforce that we have potentially has hurt us a little bit today and hopefully will pay us back tomorrow. I was struggling a lot out there, honestly. Just with a bit of confidence. High-speed. I was a little bit more confident at the end of yesterday. I just haven’t clicked as much as I did in the previous races. It sounds terrible but I have to try very hard to try and understand the car in every corner whereas the last few weeks, months it’s been a lot more natural. Maybe just one of those weekends so far. We will work hard overnight to make sure we’re as prepared as we can be tomorrow.”
Stroll: “Firstly, I want to thank the team in the garage for the repair work they did to fix my car after FP3. We had to change the front corner and floor due to damage as well as the power unit and gearbox because of the heavy impact, so they did a great job working super quickly to get me back on track in time for Qualifying. It was a tough day out there. I struggled in Qualifying with the grip and balance of the car; it’s hard to really push when you don’t have that confidence. We’ll work through everything tonight to see if there’s any improvements we can make ahead of the race. This is a track that offers good overtaking opportunities, so we’ll be pushing hard for points.”
The Top 10 also featured Alpine’s Esteban Ocon who climbed into Q3 after a good showing in mixed conditions. Teammate Pierre Gasly looked good too and was in the position to make it in until his final attempt where he made a mistake.
He was a close 12th behind Williams’ Alexander Albon, who had a good time to miss out Q3 by just the 0.003s margin. The Thai racer reckons the car is in good shape to fight for points, as Logan Sargeant rued missing out in Q2.
It was same for both the Haas drivers Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen, who were knocked out in Q1. The German has had a difficult run from practice itself, while the Dane’s strategy didn’t work out despite two timed laps decision.
Stake F1 Team’s Valtteri Bottas was comfortably into Q2 which was maximum he could have done, as Zhou Guanyu faltered due to strategy. Visa Cash App RB were in similar boat with Daniel Ricciardo making it in, while Yuki Tsunoda is destined for a fight back.
Ocon: “We will start tomorrow’s race from ninth place after Qualifying in tenth and reaching Q3. We brought some upgrades here in Spa, which we’ll continue to gather data for each time we’re on track. It was a good afternoon and we maximised the potential in Qualifying. The weather conditions meant that it was not easy in the wet but it was fine for us to run. In Q3 it was trickier out there as we did not have a new set of tyres. We start inside the points on Sunday, we know it will not be an easy race, however, we have given ourselves a great opportunity to score points. We need to look ahead to tomorrow, assess the conditions, where it will most likely be dry, and assess our options on strategy. We aim to take all the opportunities that might come our way.”
Albon: “It was a lot of fun out there today with the conditions making it a bit tricky but a joy to drive. Trying to get the rears to survive or to go flat through Eau Rouge; every lap was pushing the limits. Whilst we were three milliseconds off Q3, I’m still happy with how the car felt and due to penalties, we’ll be starting from P10 anyway. We’ve made a lot of changes on our car from FP3 to Qualifying, however because of the rain, we aren’t 100% sure how these changes have gone, but we’ll be looking to have a good day tomorrow and fight for points.”
Ricciardo: “Today I felt good and thought we would be better than thirteenth; I’m disappointed with this result but happy with the session and the pace we had, as I generally think we were a Q3 car. In Q2 the rain started to come down a bit more, so we chose to set the time a bit earlier in case it got worse. At the time we felt it was a good decision and we were able to improve our lap time a little bit, but it didn’t work out for us as the rain stabilised enough when we were at the garage, and everyone was able to improve. I’m comfortable with the dry conditions we’re hopefully going to have tomorrow; here it’s normally a one-stop race, but with the bad weather we had today maybe the track will have poor grip which might create a two-stop race. In this case, there might be more opportunities with the strategy.”
Bottas: “I feel we made the most out it today – considering the unpredictable, ever-changing track conditions. We manage to put in clean laps with good timing, and the end result is pretty much an indication of where we stand at the moment. Every lap felt different, and it was quite the challenge to estimate tyre grip, but we managed to improve on the last push lap of Q2 on a new set of tyres – eventually claiming 14th on the grid. The conditions are set to be different again tomorrow, but we were able to put in a good amount of running in the dry yesterday to properly understand our setup ahead of the race, which should help us be in the mix. Tomorrow is a new opportunity to go for it, and it would be nice to finally get points before heading into the summer break. We’ve seen some unpredictable races on this track, and overall, it’s always been a pretty pace-dominated race, so let’s see what we have in store for tomorrow.”
Hulkenberg: “I think our run profile was actually good, close to optimum, I don’t feel like we left anything out there. We just didn’t have the pace unfortunately, I was struggling on the intermediate, and we didn’t have the grip needed to do a better lap time. It’s been a bit of a theme this season that on the intermediates the car doesn’t feel that happy and not in the best place. We need to understand and analyze that for the future. I don’t know if others went for higher downforce for qualifying because of the rain, but if that is the case it could play into our hands, but we’ll only find out tomorrow.”
Here’s how F1 Belgian GP qualifying panned out
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