Formula 1®
Max puts his RB20 on pole at a damp Spa Francorchamps for a moment, Leclerc inherits pole position with Perez alongside. Lewis starts from P3 next to Lando Norris. In the past Max should win but, is the RB20 up to the task.
Leclerc will start the Belgian Grand Prix from pole position after qualifying second fastest behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. Max dominated qualifying in the rain and beat Leclerc by 0.595 seconds but has a 10-place grid penalty for exceeding his permitted number of engine components.
Lewis Hamilton will start third for Mercedes, ahead of the McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. George Russell was seventh fastest, from Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso and the Alpine of Esteban Ocon.
Max came to Belgium for the final race before the summer break on the back of a shaky run of form, with McLaren appearing to have seized the ascendancy in Formula 1. But he was in imperious form on his favourite track, where he has won the past three years, and always seemed to destined to be fastest.
The conditions were tricky. The track was wet at the start of qualifying, and persistent light rain kept it that way throughout, but the weather never deteriorated to the point that the session was at risk of being stopped – the amount of spray was limited and drivers were always able to see where they were going.
“It was a nice qualifying. Luckily the weather was OK. It was raining a little bit but we could do a decent qualifying,” Everything went well. Every tyre set I was on, we could do decent lap times. The car was working quite well in the wet. I was just able to do clean laps. Tomorrow is going to be a different day, warmer and no rain, so it will be about tyre degradation, I don’t know how quick we are going to be. I hope we can be in the mix to try and move forward.”
Ferrari have had a difficult run since Leclerc won the Monaco Grand Prix at the end of May, and were not expecting Spa to suit their car. Leclerc, who snuck ahead of Perez by just 0.011secs, said: “I definitely did not expect that this weekend, but with the tricky conditions we could do something above our expectations.
“It is a good day for the team and now we need to focus on tomorrow and see what will happen when the rain is gone.” When I am in Eau Rouge on the first lap, I will see what is the best thing I can do, but I will try to keep that first place”.
Max
“Today was a positive day. We were really strong, have maximised the car and have the best possible position for tomorrow. You always try and do the best lap possible; it was wet today and the conditions tomorrow will be better and I think it will all be about tyre management. Hopefully what we did today will help us with tyre management for tomorrow, and I felt more comfortable with the wing that we chose, so I hope I can come back into the fight with the other teams.
There are many other fast cars out there who are really strong and I think the McLarens will be tough to beat tomorrow. Hopefully we can fight for a position with the grid place penalty and be back in the mix and I hope that we can be competitive. We hope that it won’t hurt us too much but we will see as the weather will be different, the wind will change and we will set up the car a bit differently. So we will see and we look forward to tomorrow.”
Checo
“It is a good boost of confidence for myself and the team to be starting on the front row tomorrow. It feels good to have momentum on my side and to hopefully have a strong result ahead of summer break. We had good pace all the way through qualifying, we changed the car’s balance dramatically from yesterday to today with everything focused on race pace.
We managed to get nice, solid balance out there so I’m very pleased with that. It’s going to be a long race tomorrow, if I see an opportunity early on we’ll go for it but it is going to be a different scenario with weather conditions. Tomorrow is a new opportunity, and I’m looking forward to it as I think we are in a good position to fight for the victory.”
Lewis
Overall, qualifying was a good session for us. We tried to predict the weather as best we could, which is a real challenge around here. In hindsight, we would have chosen to run a little later on our new set of Intermediates in Q3, but the conditions and incoming rain are so hard to forecast. Our pace was still decent on tyres that we had completed multiple push laps on so we can be pleased with our efforts today.
Tomorrow’s race will be a challenge. We’ve likely got a few quicker cars starting behind us in Verstappen and the McLarens. I will be getting my head down though, trying to hold position to them and see if I can keep up with the guys ahead of me. I will be giving it everything and hopefully the changes we’ve made overnight will help us find more pace in the dry than we had on Friday.
