Well with that, the summer break is over – although the weekend’s weather in Belgium was nothing like what we would have expected at the end of August.
The Belgian Grand Prix broke the world record for the shortest Formula One race in history. Classified after a single lap, the official race distance recorded was 6.880km (for reference, the race’s distance was supposed to be 308.052km).
From 15:00 CET, 19 cars (Sergio Perez unfortunately hit the barrier on his lap to the grid) were on the grid and ready to race. After a number of delays, the formation lap behind the safety car got underway at 15:25 CET. Throughout the formation lap (and the subsequent lap, also behind the safety car) drivers complained to their teams about the lack of visibility on track, and the conditions, which Antonio Giovinazzi described as “undriveable”. The start procedure was suspended after these two laps, as race control deemed the conditions too unsafe to race.
Thus began the tedious waiting period. For over three hours Formula One held it’s breath as drivers, teams, fans and the media were given periodic updates (which said not much more than “another update will follow in ten minutes”) regarding the race restart.
Finally, at approximately 18:10 CET, the decision was made to restart the race. What followed was two more laps behind the safety car in similar conditions to those from the previous attempt, before the red flags were finally waved and it was announced that the race would not resume.
Does that sound pointless? Not completely. Officially, enough laps took place for the race to be classified, but since it was less than 75% of the original race distance, only half-points could be awarded to each of the top ten finishers. This resulted in a win for Max Verstappen, a podium for Lewis Hamilton, and a first-time second place finish for George Russell, on what was officially his 50th race (if you can call it that).
Following this bizarre event, fans and drivers alike have expressed their displeasure for the way things were carried out, with Lewis Hamilton calling the race a “farce”. Understandably, fans at the track were upset by the lack of racing after forking out large amounts of money to watch their favourite drivers battle it out on track.
Overall race weekend review
Aside from the bizarre race that took place from Sunday, the weekend still provided some entertainment for us – from contract renewals to memes on Twitter.
Just days before the race weekend Fernando Alonso took to Twitter with a cryptic message no one could understand, leaving fans to speculate what the Spaniard was hinting at. His teammate, Esteban Ocon responded in the same cryptic format, making fans believe it may have had something to do with his future at Alpine. On the Thursday of the race weekend, Alpine had announced that Alonso would be staying at the team for the 2022 season. This was great news for the team as they looked to begin the next era of Formula 1 with a strong driver line up.
Then, on the Friday, Red Bull announced that Sergio Perez would remain at Red Bull for the 2022 season. The Mexican driver has had an interesting season so far, with one win and one third place finish he has been ranked higher than his predecessors of that second Red Bull seat, Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon. Some doubts had arisen about his future when it seemed that Helmut Marko the Red Bull advisor, was apparently not happy with Perez’s results. Nevertheless, Red Bull’s driver line up remains the same as the team continue to push for WDC’s and Constructors championships.
During the FP1, 2 & 3 Max Verstappen showed his pace even in the wet conditions, all of the drivers showed their skills, trying to fight against the tricky conditions. The practices included some crashes from Verstappen himself and Charles Leclerc also. Qualifying is where Lando Norris showed his pace, after topping the charts in Q1 and Q2, it looked like the Brit was on course for the first pole position of his career. This dream was suddenly wiped out when Norris lost control of his McLaren in Eau Rouge and had a big shunt into the barriers.
The red flag was then brought out to stop the session but many questioned whether Q3 should even have started because the conditions were so bad. Sebastian Vettel was heard on the team radio saying how “it was unnecessary” to take the risk to run Q3 in those conditions and then the German slowed his car down to check that his fellow driver was okay and relayed this message to his team. Norris was taken to the hospital for precautionary checks but was then cleared to race the next day.
Everyone was on edge for what would seem like a gripping race, a wet race was bound to produce some interesting results. Rain poured and poured and the conditions proved undrivable. During all of the waiting, many fans took to Twitter as we were provided with images of drivers and teams sleeping, relaxing and playing games to pass the time as they waited for updates. The race directors then confirmed the race would not resume after two laps behind the safety car. Many questions about these regulations were brought up and it now looks like some changes will be made to avoid having a situation like this again.
Hopefully in Zandvoort next weekend we’ll have a race to make up for last weekend.
The Fastest Sector 