“Return of the Kimi.”
Welcome back to another edition of Dre’s Race Review, we got a double header coming up over the next couple of days and this time round we start with F1’s Belgian Grand Prix from the legendary Spa-Francorchamps. And with it, Kimi Antonelli returned to winning away to take his revenge on a hard-fighting Charles Leclerc, with Max Verstappen back on the podium again. Let’s talk about it.
Don’t Call it A Comeback
The weekend opened up with interesting reflections on current pace. Mercedes being the class leaders was no surprise via Kimi, but it was still startling to see George Russell half a second behind in qualifying. Looking at the telemetry, it seems Russell may have a deployment management problem on his side of the garage, where he was losing tenths of a second on the run to Pouhon and the run to Blanchimont where he’s down as much as six miles per hour. It’s alarming and there’s an implication within the team that it’s not George that’s causing the difference in performance. For all the tech in the world at the heights of the self-labelled “pinnacle of Motorsport”, Mercedes genuinely isn’t sure why their two elite drivers are so far apart in terms of performance. Odd.
Speaking of deployment issues, Red Bull sacrificed Hadjar’s runs in Q3, knowing he was due a back of the grid start (30-places) for taking a new ICE, Turbo and Exhaust, to use him to tow Max Verstappen through the Blanchimont run, where Red Bull were weak all weekend (But amongst the quickest in the technical Sector 2). It got him up to the front row in the end, even if he was still a third of a second off Kimi’s pole time. No-one else was within a half a second as Lando Norris took third to mitigate a 10-place grid drop of his own for inevitably taking a new battery, ahead of George and two Ferrari’s.
The start was where we peaked for excitement, sadly. Max Verstappen deployed his whole battery down the run to Eau Rouge to take the lead, only for Kimi to counter on the Kemmel, with Leclerc taking advantage to go round the outside for second. Just behind them though, we had a controversial clash between George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, which led to the brief return of…
Judge Dre-dd – Lewis Hamilton for causing a collision with George Russell (Lap 1)
Dre’s Perspective: Honestly, I can see why a lot of people (George included), called it a racing incident. There’s not much in it at first glance, and it’s an opening lap so typically the stewards take a bit more mitigation onboard.
However, by the book, Lewis is in trouble here. George had done enough around the outside (Wing-Mirror level) to earn the right to have racing room. Lewis does understeer off the apex of the corner and that mistake causes the contact that takes George out. Lewis does as much as he can to avoid it, but it happens regardless. You have to ding him here for causing a collision, but I said during our Discord call for the race, that I think a mitigated 5 second penalty because it’s the opening lap and the marginal contact is fair here. And amazingly, I think the stewards got it spot on here, because that’s exactly how they saw it too.
I was genuinely surprised to see so much backlash on this one. A part of me will always take into account the Hamilton-effect of a very vocal fanbase, but this by the book is a slam dunk penalty. Maybe people are fired up given Argentina’s playing in a World Cup final tonight that many still think they didn’t deserve, but by the book it’s a slam dunk penalty.
And before anyone loses their head about it again, remember, the drivers wanted these rules because they wanted to race like Max Verstappen did. I will keep hammering that point home because that’s where the frustration needs to be sent.
Dre-dd and Stewards agree – 5-second time penalty
After that early exchange, Verstappen retakes Leclerc for second but the Ferrari’s stay in close proximity. Oscar Piastri tries to have a go at LeClerc around the outside of the kemmel and… oh boy, here comes the judge again.
Judge Dre-dd: Charles Leclerc accused of causing a collision with Oscar Piastri
Again, I can see why some called for a penalty here. Leclerc hangs his car towards the middle of the track and at the last minute veers left towards Piastri’s overlapping car and there’s contact, which breaks part of Piastri’s floor.
I think a lot of people have judged this based on the outcome, which did harm Piastri’s car long-term for the race, but that’s not (in my opinion), how these incidents should be judged. The action is, and unfortunately the book has made these incidents pretty clearcut.
Piastri wasn’t entitled to racing room, he’s on the outside of Charles and needs to be at his wing-mirror to earn it. Because of that, Charles has the right to take the racing line for the corner, which is on the outside and the onus is on Piastri to back out of his pass attempt. He doesn’t and the contact is incidental and for me, not intentional from Charles.
Again, don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Dre-dd and Stewards agree – No Further Action
After the dust was settled, we had Antonelli inching away from Verstappen at the lead, Max was the first to blink on Lap 17 for his one-scheduled stop for the day. There was a brief debris VSC that Antonelli couldn’t stop under to take advantage of, but they did cover off the undercut well enough given Max lost the best of his outlap. But another VSC opened the door for the Ferrari’s to box under VSC, with Leclerc taking the lead as a VSC pitstop only costing you 11 seconds instead of 19 under normal circumstances.
Antonelli had to stretch his legs to deal with the long-running Lando Norris in front of him (It also turns out all the Mercedes power-units had issues with deployment out of La Source), and then chip away at Leclerc’s three-second lead.
Props to Ferrari, at their best they have a car that can match the best of what Mercedes can throw at it, but it’s over longer stints that the Silver Arrow’s superior tyre-wear is able to keep them in that optimal performance window for longer, and as the race wrapped up, Leclerc couldn’t keep up with the suffocating pace of Antonelli as he inch out a two-second margin for the victory.
Fair play to Leclerc for getting right back on form after a rough patch, and while they were fortunate that they got a VSC in their favour, Leclerc’s half of the garage played their hand as well as they could. Not so much for Hamilton, who’s poor stop had him hit a member of his crew, and they forgot to adjust his front wing angle, so that harmed him in the back half for fourth. Luckily for Ferrari, only a 30,000 euro fine (10k suspended) for the unsafe release, and everyone was okay.
But it’s another brilliant win for Kimi Antonelli, who is just consistently brilliant at the moment. The car wasn’t 100%, Kimi lost eight seconds on the road with the VSC, still got it done. And with Russell’s unfortunate DNF cancelling out his own poor Silverstone result, he’s back up to +45 on the scoreboard. Hard to argue with that table given how good he’s been. Hamilton sticks around through chunky results, while the Russell camp has to know that they need more than reliability bingo to get back into this. I feel like the Summer Break is going to be very interesting as we enter the second half of the season…
The Lightning Round
400,000 across the weekend at Spa, a record turnout for the venue. Delighted for the track, it’s just a real shame that the spectacle of F1 there has not clicked. I know the usuals will go after the new cars, but I have to be that guy for a minute and say – They weren’t great in the previous gen of these turbo-hybrids either. One-stop strategy races combined with really thin wings and predictable passing spots do not make for good TV. It’s why Spa’s going on rotation with Barcelona.
And I maintain the point at the end of my last DRR – Pushing a button to pass someone on a battery isn’t all that much different than pushing one to open a gap in their rear wing, but the goalposts for “artificial racing” can be as thin or as wide as needed depending on your feelings.
I’ll give the dislikers this one though – Not ideal that Russell had 0% battery as a fault when Hamilton hit him.
Bonus half point on the rating for Franco Colapinto and his double pass on teammate Pierre Gasly and Liam Lawson. That was awesome. Just a shame it was slapped to the timing tower window in a box where you couldn’t really see it properly. It goes hand-in-hand with the rough drone camera shots we got on the run to Blanchimont on the outside of the curve just not looking all that nice. I get it, live sports production is about as tough a job as it gets behind the camera, but when you’re F1 and have your level of budget, we can make better creative decisions and have a second helicopter in the air if need be.
A really solid comeback from Isack Hadjar to get back to sixth from the back of the field on effectively two hard stints and holding off a faster Norris at the end. Only finished 11 seconds behind Verstappen too. The more I watch him, the more assured I feel about Red Bull’s more balanced lineup.
It’s good news that a P9 for Arvid Lindblad in a Racing Bull car doesn’t move me anymore. *nods*
Props to Gabriel Bortoleto for Audi’s best finish so far in P8, putting them just one point behind Williams (Seriously, more needs to be said about how bad their season’s been). Also, Haas have dropped like a stone this season and it feels like it’s not getting the attention that it should. Honeymoon’s over, Komatsu.
Fernando Alonso went down two laps, on a seven-kilometre race track, in just an 84 minute race (That had a Safety Car). I don’t know why he’s still doing this.
The Verdict: 5/10 (Meh) – Probably the tamest race of this new regulation set so far. Spa just doesn’t click with modern day F1, Mediums that can run half distance don’t make for intriguing racing, it always felt like Antonelli was going to win it, and a rather time upper-midfield means a race that won’t stay in the memory. See you in Hungary.
