
The Red Bull driver is unstoppable! Max Verstappen takes victory in the sprint race at Spa, beating early leader Oscar Piastri.
After spots of rain had fallen as the cars initially lined up on the starting grid 20 minutes ahead of the scheduled start time, it began coming down heavily ten minutes later.
The race started at 17:35 local time behind the safety car, which mandated all the cars to start the race on full wet tyres.
They were sent around for five formation laps, which was originally announced as four before one more was added in a bid to clear more water by the cars running at reduced speed.
This meant when the action did get going the distance was reduced from 15 to 11 laps, with several drivers including polesitter Verstappen reporting conditions were already good enough for intermediate tyres early in the initial formation lap procession.
When the safety car finally came in, plenty of drivers chose to pit and switch to inters.
This included Piastri from just behind Verstappen and the McLaren driver was joined in making the final formation lap call by Carlos Sainz, Pierre Gasly and Lewis Hamilton – with the Alpine racer emerging behind Piastri as several teams had to hold their cars as others pitted around them.
Verstappen did not complete lap one on the track as he too came in for inters, joined by Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris behind – two drivers that could not stop on the final formation lap as they were running behind their team-mates and facing a potentially very long double-stack stop.
Leclerc got a long hold anyway as Ferrari had to wait for several cars to come by in the pitlane, with Verstappen slightly delayed waiting for Norris to come past.
When he re-emerged from the pits, Piastri had already swept away from La Source and was in the lead with a 1.5 seconds advantage early in lap two.
Verstappen had halved that one lap later, but then the race was suspended by a safety car period after Fernando Alonso spun off while running behind Nico Hulkenberg in an incident that will be investigated after the race as it was labelled a possible “impeding” infraction on the FIA timing screens.
The race resumed at the start of lap six, with Verstappen sticking right with Piastri as they powered back up to speed and then immediately blasting ahead on the first time they ran back onto the Kemmel Straight having shot through the Eau Rouge/Raidillon sequence with the McLaren fractionally ahead.
Verstappen then ran clear to an easy win, ending up with a 6.6s final margin of victory over Piastri.
So more championship points for Max Verstappen following this sprint race win and yet the highlight was Oscar Piastri leading and then taking a solid P2 for McLaren.

Belgian Grand Prix, sprint race results:
1 Max Verstappen Red Bull 24:58.433
2 Oscar Piastri McLaren +6.677s
3 Pierre Gasly Alpine +10.733s
4 Carlos Sainz Ferrari +12.648s
5 Charles Leclerc Ferrari +15.016s
6 Lando Norris McLaren +16.052s
7 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes +16.757s*
8 George Russell Mercedes +16.822s
9 Esteban Ocon Alpine +22.410s
10 Daniel Ricciardo AlphaTauri +22.806s
11 Lance Stroll Aston Martin +25.007s
12 Alexander Albon Williams +26.303s
13 Valtteri Bottas Alfa Romeo +27.006s
14 Kevin Magnussen Haas +32.986s
15 Zhou Guanyu Alfa Romeo +36.342s
16 Logan Sargeant Williams +37.571s
17 Nicolas Hülkenberg Haas +37.827s
18 Yuki Tsunoda AlphaTauri +39.267s
Sergio Perez Red Bull DNF
Fernando Alonso Aston Martin DNF
*Five-second time penalty for causing a collision with Sergio Perez















