2024 Belgian Grand Prix

The Mercedes was a bouncing ill-balanced handful around Spa on Friday. It finished 1-2 on Sunday, one-stopping George Russell with his two-stopping team-mate Lewis Hamilton on his back (and Oscar Piastri’s McLaren breathing heavy from within the DRS zone of Hamilton). The car had been transformed by changes made overnight on Friday, but this wasn’t apparent until Sunday, given that Saturday was wet throughout.

After the race Russell was found to be 1.5kg underweight and was therefore disqualified. That was an unforeseen complication of him converting to the one-stop, a strategy that no-one believed in pre-race.

Max Verstappen had set the fastest qualifying time in the damp of Saturday with his big-winged Red Bull by over 0.6sec but was taking a 10-place power unit change grid penalty. That big wing and a shortening of the DRS zone by 75 metres meant overtaking wasn’t easy and he spent most of the race in a DRS train eating up his tyres. Which is why he finished an unremarkable fifth across the line.