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Lewis Hamilton increased his World Championship lead to 47 points with another dominating victory in, for fans, a frustratingly dry and sunny Spa-Francorchamps.
Here are our takeaways from a Belgian Grand Prix that was a perfect snapshot of the 2020 season so far.
Different place, same result
Look familiar? 😬 #BelgianGP 🇧🇪 # F1 pic.twitter.com/nai1rRGzR0
– Planet F1 (@ Planet_F1) August 30, 2020
We had high hopes for this race, as always at Spa. From the beginning of the week, when the weather forecast had rain on all three days, it was a case of ‘bring it in’.
But when one of the pilots on the podium, third-placed Max Verstappen, describes a grand prix as “boring, not pleasant,” imagine what the fans felt.
Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas and Verstappen started 1-2-3 on the grid and held the same spots throughout the race, taking their completely familiar spots on the grandstand.
So what else gave the feeling of ‘the same old’? Well, it doesn’t rain to begin with. Those annoying dark clouds sprang up again, but they never threatened to deposit their content on the track.
And then there were the problems with the tires. The top three were looking after the rubber in the final stages, clearly aware of the punctures that spiced up the British Grand Prix, but you always had the feeling that ‘they won’t let it happen again, for sure’.
Fair play for Mercedes and Hamilton. It is not their problem that they are much better than the rest and the challenge is there for others to catch up.
However, unless the ban on ‘party modes’ makes a significant difference when it unveils next week, and you suspect it probably won’t, another procession can be expected at Monza.
Was Bottas caught taking a nap?
Did Valtteri Bottas fall asleep during the Mercedes pre-race meeting? There was an instruction that seemed to have been overlooked.
“Do I have a push?” the Finn asked his engineer on lap six as he chased after Hamilton. “We agreed not to use it against each other,” was the reply, prompting Bottas to reply, “I never heard that.”
In the end, Bottas was never going to beat the World Champion at Spa. However, the fact that he was quickly put back in his box when he felt like trying to get rid of him was the last sign, not that any was really needed, of the hierarchy at Mercedes.
Bottas is essentially no longer in contention for the World Championship and neither is Verstappen, perhaps prompting his pessimistic comments immediately after the race.
It’s simply an unstoppable march to the No. 7 title for Hamilton and the way his team called off the fight before even 15% of the race was complete showed that Mercedes knew it too.
Cooking on Gas-ly
A well deserved Driver of the Day was Pierre Gasly, whose impressive revival continued apace with another brilliant performance at Spa.
The race needed to light up and the strategy adopted by AlphaTauri and Racing Point for Gasly and Sergio Pérez, respectively, helped in that regard. Neither driver pitted under the safety car after the accident involving Antonio Giovinazzi and George Russell and after doing so they were quick enough to fight to get the order back up in the points.
Gasly finished P8 having started P12 and drove brilliantly, a year after the most horrible weekend imaginable when his friend Anthoine Hubert was killed in an FP2 accident just as the Frenchman was also coming to terms with being demoted from the Red Bull team.
It would have been easy for Gasly to give up, or at least accept that he had wasted his chance to become a superior pilot.
However, he has shown remarkable character to produce a series of terrific performances in 2020 that have really turned heads, and at the age of 24, it’s surely only a matter of time before another opportunity arrives for Gasly to make the most of it. its great potential.
Ferrari faces the misery of Monza
If there is one positive for the Scuderia heading into the Italian Grand Prix next week, it is that there will be no tifosi in the stands to witness what appears to be another humiliation.
If the fans had been there, one could imagine the white – or red – scarves waving like Real Madrid fans when their team is playing poorly at the Bernabéu Stadium.
Last year in Belgium, Ferrari blocked the front row of the grid and Charles Leclerc won the race, sparking a three-game winning streak in September for the team. But that was before the FIA found something they didn’t like about its engine.
This time Sebastian Vettel and Leclerc were racing Williams and Alfa Romeo, and were overtaken by former Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen in essentially a customer car with one of its own engines at the rear and finishing at P13 and P14.
Both drivers now seem to have gone through the ‘disappointed’ stage and have an air of resignation about them, knowing that there is nothing they can do to cover up the failings of a team that is seemingly backing down while others around them improve.
One man, however, had a worse afternoon. Not only did Carlos Sainz have to watch the entire race from the garage after an exhaust problem in his McLaren prevented him from reaching the grid, he did so knowing that he will drive for Ferrari next year.
No wonder he bowed his head.
Renault finds its identity
We’ve been waiting for Renault to finally put together a full race weekend and it finally arrived at Spa, because they impressed over the three days.
With the cars set for straight-line speed, Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon finished P4 and P5 and in one or two more laps the Australian would surely have caught and passed Verstappen whose tires were in worse shape.
With this evidence, and we now know what they do best, Renault should be in the mix for potentially even a podium at Monza next week.
The story about team boss Cyril Abiteboul having to get a tattoo if Ricciardo achieves a top-three finish has been around for weeks; however, he would surely be delighted if he could finally be eliminated once and for all. .
Jon wilde
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