Race Report: Victory in Spa on Bittersweet Day

• Kimi Antonelli took victory in Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix whilst George Russell had an unfortunate opening lap which led to a DNF.

• Kimi started on pole with George lining up P3; both drivers suffered from a lack of boost which affected power on the opening lap and that cost them speed on the run to Turn 5.

• Whilst Kimi lost position to the Red Bull of Max Verstappen into Turn 2, he gained that back into Turn 5 whilst George got swamped by cars behind and suffered contact with the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton which ended his race.

• After the resulting Safety Car, Kimi ran a conventional Medium-Hard one-stop, pitting to cover Verstappen and retaining position.

• The Ferrari of Charles Leclerc gained advantage on track by pitting under the Virtual Safety Car before Kimi closed a gap of three seconds down to retake the lead with just under 10 laps to go.

• He slowly dropped the Ferrari out of overtake mode to take his sixth win of the season and the team’s eighth.

• The team now heads to Budapest for the final race before the summer shutdown.

George Russell

It’s been another difficult weekend, and I leave Spa disappointed that we’ve had another race where we’ve not scored any points. We’ve had too many of those weekends recently, but we will reset again and see what we can do in Budapest. We want to go into the shutdown with positivity and hopefully we can do that with a better Grand Prix in Hungary.

The issue we faced with our boost on the opening lap was different to what we’ve been trying to solve earlier in the weekend. I made a good start and was in a decent position to fight for the lead but didn’t have the speed we expected on the run to Turn 5. I was overtaken by several cars behind and the incident with Lewis (Hamilton) followed.

We are working flat out as a team to improve our reliability. We know it has cost us too many points so far this season and we’re all determined to get on top of it. It’s frustrating for everyone but I know just how hard everyone at Brackley and Brixworth is pushing to improve it.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

Today was one of contrasting fortunes. Kimi took a well-deserved win, having lost the lead through no fault of his own. He showed great pace all weekend and was able to use that to good effect to catch and pass the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc. He was robbed of the chance to do that at Silverstone, so this victory was particularly sweet.

Sadly, George’s weekend has been tougher, and his race came to a premature end. Both cars suffered from a lack of boost which affected power on the opening lap, which put them under pressure. George’s issue was more extreme, and he ended up in a pack of cars at Turn 5 after losing several positions before being contacted by the Ferrari of Lewis (Hamilton). It is another frustrating end to a difficult weekend for him, but we know that he will reset and come back in a positive frame of mind in Hungary.

Despite winning here, we are still finding issues with these regulations. It is something we are all working as hard as we can to get on top of, but we’ve clearly got more learning ahead of us. We will need to keep improving if we are to maximise our points scoring potential and fight for the championships as the season progresses.